The Auckland-based company first came into contact with Ericsson Mobility World a couple years ago as winner of the Ericsson New Zealand/Microsoft Mobile Internet Developers competition. It won with a WAP person-to-person betting service called Feverpitch, the only service of its kind in the world at the time.

It gained more recognition last year thanks to an innovative mobile service called SMS JukeBox. This application lets listeners send a query direct to a radio station via SMS and receive an automated response giving the title, artist and album name of the song currently playing.

The Hyperfactory is now working closely with Ericsson Mobility World in New Zealand, preparing to impress the industry again with the country's first business-focused MMS application.

Geoffrey Handley, Managing Director of The Hyperfactory, says: "Our relationship with Ericsson Mobility World is mutually rewarding. We advocate the use of Ericsson technology because we believe it is best suited for our requirements. And we develop leading-edge, innovative and commercially relevant platforms and applications that Ericsson is comfortable putting its name beside."

He says Ericsson Mobility World helped The Hyperfactory with entry to this year's 3GSM World Congress in Cannes and set up meetings in relation to its SMS JukeBox application. The application was a finalist at the event within the Best Consumer Wireless Application or Service category. "We have a strong partnership with Ericsson Mobility World in both technical and marketing areas. Ericsson not only provides us with a valuable level of credibility, but the distribution channel is extensive. This has obviously been a big support," Handley says.

As for application development, Handley says that being an Ericsson Associate has allowed his company to bypass local carriers in setting up test environments for MMS. "This has been a huge benefit and the support has been great," he says. The main benefits of the Associate program, Handley says, are access to technology, technical support, access to hardware and public relations and marketing support.

Cooperation with Ericsson Mobility World has exceeded Handley's expectations and he says he sees a productive future for the relationship. "There is a lot in the pipeline. We're also strengthening our relationship with the Ericsson Mobility World team in Australia as we begin to expand offshore." Although it is located in New Zealand, The Hyperfactory considers all of the Asia-Pacific region and North America as its market area.