Sony to launch online math service with US, Chinese startups

TOKYO - Sony will partner with American and Chinese education startups to offer online math courses, aiming to attract 1 million users worldwide in 2017.

Sony Global Education, established this spring, has developed an app centering around quizzes that enable students to readily pick up math skills. Sony is teaming up with Edmodo, a US startup that runs an educator-focused social networking site with 50 million users, and 17zuoye, which has 14 million members in China. The MathNative app will be provided through these partners as soon as autumn.

The Japanese company also plans to introduce an online service this year for creating and publishing teaching materials for math lessons. A plan under consideration would not charge for crafting math problems, while making additional content available for a fee.

As part of its medium-term strategy, Sony seeks to achieve a business model driven by recurring fees from customers. The education service, which fits this initiative, will be compatible with PCs, smartphones, tablets and various other devices.

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