Kyocera Wireless and Virgin Mobile 'Up the Ante' with New Phone

May 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- What do Virgin Mobile USA customers and Sir Richard Branson have in common? Branson and the lucky 15,000 customers who buy a Virgin Mobile Festival Special Edition Wild Card phone by Kyocera Wireless will all have special access to the Virgin Mobile Guest Lounge at the upcoming Virgin Mobile Festival on August 9-10 in Baltimore.* Customers simply have to show their new handset for admittance to the special guest area at the Festival, where Kyocera Wireless continues its 3-year run as the premier handset sponsor.

Available nationwide from May 25 through July 31 exclusively at Best Buy (www.bestbuy.com) and Best Buy Mobile stores for $99.99, the Virgin Mobile Festival Special Edition Wild Card also comes with 50 music downloads from eMusic and a one-year subscription to SPIN Magazine.

"With the introduction of the Virgin Mobile Festival Special Edition Wild Card, we've made a highly popular phone even more desirable. The killer custom design, together with a host of perks designed specially for music lovers, makes this new handset as hot a ticket as Virgin Mobile Festival itself," said Woozae Kim, director of strategic marketing and integration, handsets for Virgin Mobile USA. "We're thrilled to partner with Kyocera to put Virgin Mobile Festival into the hands of consumers across the country."

The Limited Edition handset will be easy to spot with slick white casing, blue keypad buttons, exclusive wallpapers, and graffiti-style Festival graphics around an internal screen that imitates a concert stage. One of the Limited Edition's many wild features is the easy texting that has made the original Wild Card such a success. All Wild Card handsets open lengthwise to reveal a full QWERTY keypad, ideal for texting and instant messaging. All Wild Cards also include a 1.3 megapixel camera and support streaming music tracks.

"Kyocera has been a part of the Virgin Mobile Festival since the beginning and this limited edition of the Wild Card is absolutely befitting of how grand the event has become," said Tom Maguire, divisional vice president of global marketing at Kyocera Wireless Corp (http://tools.kyocera-wireless.com/phoneshowcase.do). "The Wild Card is already an extremely popular phone, but adding this iconic styling and the perks that come with this limited supply make it just that much more appealing. We don't expect these 15,000 phones to last long on Best Buy's shelves."

Additional information about the Virgin Mobile Festival Special Edition Wild Card is available at www.virginmobileusa.com/phones/phoneDetail.do?skuId=VMM100 or www.kyocera-wireless.com/wildcard-virginmobile-phone, where fans also can sign up to receive event updates. The two-day Virgin Mobile Festival will be held August 9-10 at Pimlico RaceCourse in Baltimore, Maryland. The largest music and arts festival on the East Coast, this year's Festival headliners include Bob Dylan, Foo Fighters, Jack Johnson, Kanye West, Nine Inch Nails and Stone Temple Pilots. Fans can check out the full lineup and sign up for news and updates at www.virginmobilefestival.com.

* Access to the Virgin Mobile Guest Lounge does not include the cost of admission or travel to or from the Virgin Mobile Festival.

SOURCE Virgin Mobile USA