Zapp to break even until 2005

Zapp, the only CDMA mobile telephony operator on the Romanian market will break even as early as 2004-2005, as estimated by President Cuneyt Turktan. “There’s no talk about profit any sooner than 3 or 4 years from the start of the business,” he explained. Zapp set sail at the end of 2001. Even though still operating at a loss, the company will continue to invest on the Romanian market. Its 2003 plans include about $50 million investments aimed at services, new shops and infrastructure. A significant share of this amount will go to the opening of the first lab to develop applications for the Brew software platform (sort of an OS for the CDMA (mobile phones) at the end of the month. Zapp is also preparing to relaunch its data traffic service (Zapp Online Turbo) in the next two weeks. It is also set to release five new CDMA handsets by yearend, two of which sporting colour displays. The first releases are scheduled for August. Four of the new models will be running Brew and are now tested by Zapp. Zapp has invested over $300 million since entering the market, with $60 million invested in 2002 alone. Zapp has about 120,000 subscribers at the moment, 85% of which are business class customers. Data services account for 20% of the total traffic through Zapp’s network. ZF