[The UCP portal, Sms.at, earns profit primarily due to paid services including the processing and sending of photos online and over mobiles. ]

by Maija Pesola, London -- "Europe's beleaguered mobile internet industry was given a slim ray of hope on Friday with the news that an Austrian mobile portal had made what is believed to be the sector's first profit.

"Sms.at, an Austrian portal owned by UCP, the German-based wireless company, said it had made an operating profit of E268,889 (GBP235,752) for the first nine months of the year, on revenues of E3.92m.

The sums may be comparatively modest, but the move to profitability puts sms.at ahead of larger rivals such as Vizzavi, the portal joint venture between Vodafone and Vivendi, Genie, which is part of the UK's MMO2, and Deutsche Telekom's T-Motion, which all continue to make large losses. The latest interim figures from MMO2, for example, showed Genie making a six-month loss of GBP65m on revenues of only GBP39m.

Sms.at's move into the black is also in sharp contrast to mounting industry concerns over spending and debt levels, which have led to the scaling back of mobile internet ambitions across Europe.

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