American Greetings Launches New Mobile Spinoff

Update: Correction: In my enthusiam to stamp down on the renewed enthusiasm, I misjudged: AGMobile is not a separate company, just a division…

Original post:

Another sign of the heydays: companies starting to spin off their mobile units, much like they did with Internet units back in the days (ok, this is the first such wireless content instance I’ve heard of, but this is not the last).

American Greetings has announced the formation of its wireless division (I suggested something on the same lines a while back), AGmobile…this is a separate company, not just another division.

Prior to this, AG had a tie-up with Moviso/Infospace Mobile to distribute wireless greeting cards..wonder what’s happened of that deal? Update: Infospace Mobile VP of Content Mark Levy replies: “We still have our deal with AG to support the MMS greeting card services for ATT and Cingular. We expect to continue to work with them for some time to come.” (More on Moviso later..I visited their offices today in LA…). Heading the new venture is the former executive VP of Sales and Marketing for Vivendi Universal/Moviso, Bryan Biniak.

Not exactly clear if AGMobile will expand beyond the core expertise of its parent, greeting cards, but it is sure to leverage the powerhouse online and offline retails position that it enjoys to push the wireless offerings…

I expect it’ll stick to MMS, but it will be pushing into mobile music as well, to some extent, through its BeatGreets site, which has music greeting cards as well…

Says the release: “In the near future, AGmobile will expand these offerings to provide a variety of additional multi-media offerings including instant messaging, e-mail and wireless personalization…AGmobile is also in the process of finalizing several high-profile partnerships, which it expects will exponentially expand their current product lines to include new audiences and offerings.”

Related:

American Greetings’ Wild Card

AmericanGreeting.com: Test, Test and Test

Comments have been disabled for this post