Mumbai: Arvato Middle East Sales (AMES) has concluded agreements with content companies Sony BMG, Hungama, I-Play, and Eros International Plc across the areas of mobile entertainment offerings, PC download and streaming music, short and long film versions, TV series and mobile-PC games.

AMES CEO Sean Emery said, "AMES is committed to bringing the best of both local and international content to all consumers here in the region. The agreements we have concluded the first step in our initiative to offer legal digital content services in the market with content partners. We are in discussions with several other important international and local content owners and will add them to the list of partners in the very near future."

"With these agreements we will be able to bring to consumers world class local and regional content for a fraction of the costs they are presently paying internationally for legal content. Our agreements are revolutionary as they allow us to experiment with various business models from advertising supported free music and ringtones to consumers in the region, to sponsor all you can eat, music, movie and game subscriptions in addition to pay as you go options", he added.

Emery further expanded on AMES intentions for the region and said, "We are planning to launch our consumer brand GETMO at the MECOM conference in Abu Dhabi which takes place from 26-28 May. We aim to launch a complete digital shopping mall for music, movies, ringtones, interactive online, mobile gaming, and other unique digital entertainment to meet consumer demands."

The AMES platform is designed to provide a unique opportunity to the advertising market that will deliver targeted user specific campaigns and will build significant digital communities for brands. In essence by working with AMES, each brand has the opportunity to build an online and mobile social network of its own customers by utilizing their platform set of applications, content and services.

AMES ambition is to work with telecom operators, local and international brands, and hardware manufacturers to create a significant digital community across the MENA region, driven by sponsored content, social network applications and product placement.

"The proliferation of music-phones has spurred the adoption of mobile music consumption across the Middle East. This shift towards the mobile platform opens numerous opportunities for service providers and enterprises to offer music-related content, services, hardware and accessories designed to enhance the mobile music environment," added Emery.