Speirtech Ltd is a wholly owned and privately funded limited company. All company shares are held by the management team.
"In 2001," Managing Director Paul Savage explains, "we were in the process of building our core product the MGP, so in financial terms there was no activity for us. Our platform has only recently matured into a revenue generating product. Now we discuss with possible buyers in the gambling industry. As far as staff goes we have managed to minimise the Speirtech team to five including management."
Speirtech's partner, Logica, has been listed on the London Stock Exchange (ticker symbol LOG.L) since Nov. 3, 1983 and entered the FTSE 100 in November 1999. Logica's clients operate across diverse markets, including telecommunications, finance, energy and utilities, industry distribution and transport and the public sector. As of Dec. 31, 2001, Logica was servicing its top 20 clients with a staff of 11,000.
The clients:
- Telecoms: BT, Cingular, Casmote, Indesat, KPN Telecom, NEC Corporation, Orange, Sandi telecom and Vodafone (Vodafone and its affiliates accounted for 10 percent of the turnover)
- Financial Services: Commerz Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland
- Industry, Distribution, etc.: Ford, Railtrack and Shell
- Energy & Utilities: American Electric Power, BG Transco and Dwr Cymru and Elexon;
- Public Sector: Dutch Tax Office and OF STED
Logica's revenue for 2001 by mobile networks was £161.1 million and £82.3 million for other telecom activities. The group total revenue was £600.2 million.
Positioning Logica:
- Consistent strategy delivering technology-based solutions to the heart of our customers' businesses worldwide.
- Delivering value-based business process outsourcing and services in our chosen markets.
According to Alatto's "Understanding Mobile Gambling" report, mobile gambling is expected to be worth at least Euro 700 million worldwide by 2006. And according to industry analysts at Ovum Research, the combined annual revenues from content and message traffic associated with MMS-based services could exceed $14 billion worldwide by 2004. "MMS presents a huge opportunity for operators, developers and content providers,"
commented John Delaney, principal analyst at Ovum. "The challenge, especially for operators, will be to create the proper business model for realizing its potential."
Mobile Phones in Europe
Mobile Communications magazine reports in its latest survey of European mobile phone ownership that penetration in Europe reached 74.5 percent at the end of June 2002, with the total number of subscriptions across the region at 289.7 million.
The highest penetration in Europe is in Italy and Sweden with levels of 89 percnet and 84 percent respectively.
In Eastern Europe, the total number of mobile subscribers now exceeds 48 million, or almost a quarter of the population.