International Rollout of Amazon MP3 in 2008
Filed under: Americas, Asia-Pacific, Electronics, Europe, Marketing, New Media, Retail, Technology
SEATTLE, Jan 27, 2008 –Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN – News) today announced that in 2008 the company will begin an international rollout of Amazon MP3, Amazon’s DRM-free MP3 digital music store where every song is playable on virtually any digital music-capable device, including the PC, Mac®, iPod®, Zune®, Zen®, iPhone™, RAZR™, and BlackBerry®. Amazon MP3 is the only retailer to offer customers DRM-free MP3s from all four major music labels as well as over 33,000 independent labels.
“We have received thousands of e-mails from Amazon customers around the world asking us when we will make Amazon MP3 available outside of the U.S. They can’t wait to choose from the biggest selection of high-quality, low-priced DRM-free MP3 music downloads which play on virtually any music device they own today or will own in the future,” said Bill Carr, Amazon.com Vice President of Digital Music. “We are excited to tell those customers today that Amazon MP3 is going international this year.”
Launched on Amazon.com in September 2007, Amazon MP3 offers Earth’s Biggest Selection of a la carte DRM-free MP3 music downloads, which now includes over 3.3 million songs from more than 270,000 artists. Every song and album in the Amazon MP3 music download store is available exclusively in the MP3 format without digital rights management (DRM) software and is encoded at 256 kbps to deliver high audio quality. Amazon MP3 customers are free to enjoy their music downloads using any hardware device; organize their music using any music management application, such as iTunes® or Windows Media Player™; and burn songs to CDs for personal use.
Most songs available on Amazon MP3 are priced from 89 cents to 99 cents, with more than 1 million of the over 3.3 million songs priced at 89 cents. The top 100 bestselling songs are 89 cents, unless marked otherwise. Most albums are priced from $5.99 to $9.99. The top 100 bestselling albums are $8.99 or less, unless marked otherwise. Buying and downloading MP3s from Amazon MP3 is easy. Customers can purchase downloads using Amazon 1-Click shopping, and with the Amazon MP3 Downloader, seamlessly add their MP3s to their iTunes® or Windows Media Player™ libraries.
The company is not disclosing a specific launch timeline for individual Amazon international websites.
About Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN – News), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as books, movies, music & games, digital downloads, electronics & computers, home & garden, toys, kids & baby, grocery, apparel, shoes & jewelry, health & beauty, sports & outdoors, tools, auto & industrial.
Amazon Web Services provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Examples of the services offered by Amazon Web Services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS), and Amazon Mechanical Turk.
Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, and the Joyo Amazon websites at www.joyo.cn and www.amazon.cn.
As used herein, “Amazon.com,” “we,” “our” and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.
Forward-Looking Statements
This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management’s expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, significant amount of indebtedness, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com’s financial results is included in Amazon.com’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2006, and all subsequent filings.
Contact:
Amazon.com, Inc.
Amazon.com Media Hotline, 206-266-7180
http://www.amazon.com/pr
Source: Amazon.com, Inc.
China Voice Holding Corp. Signs $40 Million Contract
Filed under: Communications, Internet, Mobile, Telecom
BOCA RATON, Fla., Jan 26, 2008–China Voice Holding Corp. (CHVC) (OTC:CHVC), announced today that its wholly owned U.S. subsidiary, StarCom Alliance, Inc. has signed an Exclusive Supplier Agreement with Power Prepaid Phone Card Distribution (Power Distribution), a distributor of prepaid cellular products, located in Fullerton, California.
StarCom Alliance Inc., is a Master Distributor of prepaid and postpaid cellular/wireless products, discount prepaid calling cards and other telephony related products and services that enable users to call anywhere in the world at significant savings.
CHVC’s President and CEO Bill Burbank said,
“Having completed extensive negotiations with Power Distribution, we are very pleased to have executed this Agreement. Power Distribution is a well known and respected Company focused solely on prepaid cellular products and is currently purchasing in excess of $25 Million of product annually. We anticipate that with our support infrastructure and financial resources, Power Distribution will purchase more than $40 Million of our StarCom Alliance products in the next 12 months. Prepaid Cellular is among the fastest growing segments of the telecommunications industry targeting a very large credit-challenged population.
We are also in the final stages of negotiating Exclusive Supplier Agreements with three additional companies located in California that are focused primarily on the Prepaid Calling Card business and together generate over $35 Million annually in revenue, which if completed would boost our U.S. revenues to over $100 Million. Our goal is to complete these Agreements by the second quarter of this year. Prepaid cellular and prepaid calling card products will represent a significant percentage of our U.S. revenues and when added to the results of our Chinese subsidiaries will produce continued strong growth in 2008.”
China Voice Holding Corp. (“CHVC”) is a U.S. public holding company headquartered in South Florida with a portfolio of next-generation communications products and services doing business in the People’s Republic of China and the U.S. Through its subsidiaries, the Company provides Voice over Internet Protocol (“VoIP”) telephone services, office automation, wireless broadband, unified messaging, video conferencing, mobility services and other advanced voice and data services in China, where the Company has obtained full legal status as a licensed telecommunications company. The Chinese telecommunications market is the largest and fastest growing in the world. CHVC’s focus is on providing its innovative and patented voice and data solutions to government agencies and large enterprises in China. China Voice Holding Corp. trades Over-the-Counter and is listed in the Pink Sheets under the symbol “CHVC”. Upon obtaining audits of prior fiscal years, the Company plans to file with the Securities & Exchange Commission (“SEC”) to become a full-reporting company, at which time it will apply for a listing on the NASDAQ or the AMEX; and is on schedule to complete these filings in early 2008. Prior to the filing of periodic reports to the SEC, the Company is providing publicly-available financial statements and other current information at the pinksheets.com website. Additional information may be found at www.chvc.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
The foregoing, including any discussion regarding the Company’s future prospects, contains certain “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements involve numerous risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to risks and uncertainties associated with economic conditions in the telecommunications industry, particularly in the principal industry sectors served by the Company; risks and uncertainties inherent in the operation of businesses outside the United States; changes in customer requirements and in the volume of sales to principal customers; the ability of the Company to assimilate acquired businesses and to achieve the anticipated benefits of such acquisitions; competition and technological change; and the ability of the Company to control operating costs and maintain satisfactory relationships with existing and potential vendors. The Company’s actual results of operations may differ significantly from those contemplated by any forward-looking statements as a result of these and other factors, including factors that may be set forth in the Company’s anticipated filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Contact:
China Voice Investor
The Eversull Group, Inc.
Jack Eversull, 972-378-7917
972-378-7981 (fax)
jack@theeversullgroup.com
ir@chvcmail.com
Source: China Voice Holding Corp.