Sony Bank Continues to Provide the Voice Distribution Service, "from MONEYKit Podcasting"
March 10, 2006
Sony Bank Inc. (hereinafter "Sony Bank"), a 88.0%-owned subsidiary of Sony Financial Holdings, today announced that it continues to provide "from MONEYKit Podcasting", a voice distribution service that utilizes podcasting.*
"from MONEYKit Podcasting" is a service through which Sony Bank distributes information on asset management for individuals, or market updates, essential information for making foreign currency deposits or investment trusts and other information in spoken Japanese to help customers feel more familiar with financial and economic matters. Sony Bank distributes such spoken information through "Podcasting Juice", a specialized website for podcasting provided by Nifty Corporation.
Although Sony Bank originally limited the period of service from December 12, 2005 to March 10, 2006, the company decided to continue the service based on a strong favorable customer response, as evidenced by the approximately 50,000 downloads during the initial service period.
Sony Bank is also considering of expanding this new content, for instance, by using video podcasting. Going forward, Sony Bank will keep utilizing the Internet to provide information in unique ways.
*Podcasting is the distribution of audio or video files over the Internet, including the automatic transferring of such files to digital audio players and other mobile devices and uploading audio files to the website.
Note: This is an English-language summary of a Japanese announcement made by Sony Bank on March 10, 2006. The summary was prepared by Sony Financial Holdings Inc., solely for the convenience of non-Japanese readers.
