On January 5, 2005, Weathernews Inc.(Global Chairman and CEO: Hiroyoshi Ishibashi), the world’s largest publicly traded full service weather company, started to provide the weather content “Weathernews” to Vodafone Omnitel N.V. (CEO: Pietro Guindani; hereinafter referred to as “Vodafone Italia”), Italy’s second largest mobile phone carrier which holds about a 40% share of the market in the country.

Currently, Weathernews provides more than 1.3 million users with weather content through mobile phone carriers in 14 countries and territories worldwide. Its new client, Vodafone Italia, is Italy’s second largest mobile phone carrier with some 25 million subscribers in the country. Following WIND, Vodafone Italia is the second company to which Weathernews is providing weather content.

Weathernews’ weather content “Weathernews” is included in the menu of Vodafone Italia’s official website and provides information on weather conditions and satellite images for some 1,300 locations in Italy and 25,000 in the rest of the world. In addition, it includes seasonal content that is provided during certain periods of time. Along with the inauguration of the service, Weathernews has begun providing information on some 180 ski resorts in Italy. Some of Weathernews’ weather content is provided for a fee while others are free of charge, with the former priced at 1.00 euro (approx. 140 yen) per month.

In the future, Weathernews will continue to develop content with a high degree of expressive capability, such as video images, in order to provide the sort of user-participation content that is popular in Japan and respond to the increasing use of third-generation mobile phones in various countries.