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Tag: T-Mobile

  • News Corp snaps up social video ad platform Unruly for $176 million

    News Corp snaps up social video ad platform Unruly for $176 million

    MUMBAI: News Corp has agreed to acquire global ad platform Unruly Holdings for a sum of approximately $176 million.

     

    The expected purchase price for the acquisition consists of a cash payment at closing of approximately $90 million (or ?58 million), subject to certain adjustments, and up to $86 million (or ?56 million) in future consideration primarily related to payments contingent upon the achievement of certain performance objectives.

     

    “Unruly is a feisty and creative company with a start-up sensibility that fits perfectly with our own approach to developing businesses in the digital age. The acquisition will serve as a catalyst for our brands, helping to extend our expertise in the digital and mobile video area, whether through the fast-growing realtor.com in the US, Fox Sports in Australia, News America Marketing, HarperCollins Publishers, or our market-leading mastheads around the world. Unruly complements our traditional editorial and commercial expertise with contemporary insight into how people read, watch, buy and sell in the digital era,” said News Corp CEO Robert Thomson.

     

    “We have a track record of acquiring businesses with unique capabilities, allowing them the freedom to do what they do best, while providing a global platform to accelerate their growth and realize their potential,” he added.

     

    Led by Unruly’s three co-founders, it will operate as a separate business unit, reporting to News UK CEO Rebekah Brooks.

     

    Unruly will continue to work with its existing roster of global advertisers and publishers and collaborate with News Corp businesses around the world.

     

    “We have always been pioneers in our field, so combining the formidable reach and resonance of our titles with their cutting-edge technology and video expertise will help accelerate our growth in this digital age,” said Brooks. “We look forward to working with one of Europe’s most highly regarded tech teams to create new premium video inventory for our News UK mastheads and other businesses, and to provide advertisers with best-in-class brand solutions across all platforms.”

     

    Founded in 2006, Unruly is a video distribution platform and tracks video sharing and delivers verifiable video views via paid media across mobile, desktop and tablet devices. With its data set of two trillion video views and sophisticated targeting capabilities, the company uses historical sharing behavior to predict the potential for video ads to go viral across all digital touch points.

     

    Unruly’s suite of advertising products includes: ShareRank, In-Feed advertising, In-Page advertising and Skippable In-Stream Advertising.

     

    In the coming months, News Corp business units will begin to offer Unruly products to their advertising and agency partners. This will mean a significant increase in premium video and mobile inventory, a stronger content marketing offering and, ultimately, improved returns for News Corp’s advertisers. 

     

    Unruly’s platform has attracted top tier advertisers, including such brands as adidas, Dove, T-Mobile, Evian and Renault.

     

    “We are absolutely delighted to join the News Corp family, and connect our scaled distribution, social data, and content optimisation tools with the premium ad inventory of News Corp businesses, and their highly-engaged audiences. It’s a tremendous milestone and an exciting new chapter for the whole Unruly team,” said Unruly co-founder and co-CEO Scott Button.

     

    “We are incredibly grateful for the passion and dedication of the whole Unruly team that has today resulted in this phenomenal opportunity for the business. Unruly’s enthusiasm for transforming video advertising and our agile development culture will continue to drive our innovative approach towards digital marketing as we help advertisers reconnect with consumers and future-proof their video strategy,” added Unruly co-founder and co-CEO Sarah Wood.

     

    Unruly’s third co-founder is chief technology officer Matt Cooke.

     

    Unruly employs 200 people in 15 offices, and regional hubs in London, New York and Singapore. 

     

    The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to be completed by the end of September.

  • Wipro bags five-year contract from T-Mobile Poland

    Wipro bags five-year contract from T-Mobile Poland

    MUMBAI: Wipro has bagged a five-year contract from T-Mobile Poland to provide integrated applications and infrastructure services.

     

    Wipro has committed to T-Mobile a significant improvement of its legacy applications consolidation and rationalization, transforming its operating model from application-focus to domain-focus leading to better customer service.

     

    Over the next five years, Wipro will help T-Mobile systemize and standardize the IT architecture and operations of their Polish entity. A significant portion of the services will be provided from Wipro’s Delivery Centre in Warsaw as a part of their development strategy for Poland.

     

    Wipro SVP and business head – global communications and media Anil Jain said, “We are delighted to have been chosen by T-Mobile in Poland. This is a large transformational deal and a significant win for us. We look forward to supporting T-Mobile enhance their business performance through increased operational efficiency.”

     

    T-Mobile Polska board member, chief technology and innovation Milan Zika added, “We are very pleased to have brought a business partner aboard that understands where we want to be as a company and has the expertise to help us achieve our goals.”

  • Discovery hires Laslie Grandy to look at its Digital Media arm

    Discovery hires Laslie Grandy to look at its Digital Media arm

    MUMBAI: Discovery Communications has named Leslie Grandy as Senior Vice President of Product & Development within the company’s Digital Media division.

    Grandy, a former executive at T-Mobile, Apple and RealNetworks, will oversee Discovery’s U.S. TV Networks’ digital product, mobile, development, design and project management teams.

    In the newly created role, Grandy will be tasked with driving innovative product development behind the digital extensions of Discovery Communications’ U.S. TV networks. Grandy will focus on delivering compelling digital experiences that delight fans of Discovery’s networks before, during and after the on air shows.

    “Our mission is to deliver, extend and enhance the living room experience across all screens in a way that super serves our fans,” said Guhan Selvaretnam, Senior Vice President, Digital Media, to whom Grandy will report.

    “With a strong track record of delivering results, Leslie brings the perfect mix of consumer-focused, data-driven and user-centric experience to the team. We are thrilled to have her join the Discovery family.”

  • Global mobile content, services market to top $150 billion by 2011

    Global mobile content, services market to top $150 billion by 2011

    MUMBAI: Research firm Informa Telecoms and Media predicts that the mobile web will herald dramatic growth in revenues in the mobile content and services market.

    The global mobile content, services market is expected to top $150 billion by 2011

    Despite falling average revenues per user (Arpu) for mobile operators, the mobile content and services market will continue to grow dramatically as services and applications reach maturity and new services begin to gain traction, according to Informa Telecoms and Media. The latest edition of Informa’s Mobile Content and Services report reveals that the introduction of a whole host of new players into the value chain presents new opportunities for growth in the mobile content and services market, whilst simultaneously posing a threat to mobile operators who face losing control of the billing relationship with their customers.

    The mobile web heralds a new age: Mobile handset and network technology has now evolved to a point where true mobile web access is possible. Informa anticipates that by 2011, just under half of all mobile subscribers worldwide will use mobile browsing, a trend it sees developing with new operator offerings such as T-Mobile’s ‘Web n Walk’ service and 3’s ‘X-Series’ services. Despite this, messaging, headed by SMS will continue to dominate the overall revenues for the market, generating over half the total revenue in 2011 (from 67% in 2006).

    Informa Telecoms and Media senior analyst Daniel Winterbottom who wrote the report says, “Advanced mobile content and services have been slow to take off, but this should not be confused with the deepening relationship that we have with our mobile phones. We may not be buying as many games, full-track downloads or multimedia messages as operators would like, but we are spending a huge amount of time sending and reading text messages and organising our lives using the phone’s address book, clock, alarm and calendar functions”.

    “Over time, users will warm to other data services as well. The mobile web is a prime example: Wap failed to take off when it was first launched, but five years on, more and more users have become comfortable with accessing news or other information on their mobile phones.”

    The mobile entertainment space will also see significant innovation and development. Several technologies, such as mobile music, have been available for a number of years but the increased availability of high-speed data networks (such as 3G and HSDPA) is giving further appeal to these services. Mobile music will be a major contributor to the revenues achieved in the mobile entertainment market in the next five years, although its overall share of the market will fall from 40 per cent in 2006 to 36 per cent in 2011 as new forms of entertainment such as mobile TV and video services begin to gain consumer interest. Games, gambling, personalisation and adult content will all see significant growth, as the overall mobile entertainment market grows from US$18.84 billion in 2006 to US$38.12 billion in 2011.

    Evolving services: The report investigates a number of other areas which will see growth in the next five years:

    User-Generated Content, the big story of the Internet in 2006, will continue to extend to the mobile space as new applications begin to extend communities to users on the move, and provide further means for mobile users to contribute content whilst on the move. Informa forecasts that the user-generated and communities will be worth US$13.17 billion by 2011.

    M-Commerce faces a number of challenges and has already hit a few stumbling blocks. Whilst payments for digital content ‘on-portal’ continue to function, the growth in off-portal content and the migration to the mobile web will open up the market to other players. Google and eBay are both vying hungrily for this space. Using the mobile as a vector for physical payments, however, has proven more complex and whilst the technology, in terms of Near Field Communications chips embedded in handsets, is readily available, it has been a struggle to prove demand outside of the Far East. Informa estimates that the worldwide market for m-commerce was US$359 million in 2006, coming mostly from the Asia-Pacific region.

    Mobile TV will continue to be the focus of much excitement from mobile operators as broadcast services using a range of different technologies are rolled out across Europe. It remains to be seen if consumers will be as excited about the services, and how operators will manage the issues of advertising and pricing which will be critical to the success of the service.

    Operator strategies: The shape of the mobile content market is defining the evolution of the mobile operator as a business entity. The report investigates alternate approaches that are being taken by different operators, from those remaining ‘pure play’ mobile, diversifying into new vertical markets or business applications, to those converging into a one stop communications house. It gauges how these strategies will pan out and where each strategy is likely to take hold in different regions.

    “The arrival of the mobile web on the mobile handset over in 2007 and beyond will see users embracing the same content they take for granted on their PCs. Operators need to ensure they are firmly locked into this value chain or risk missing out on what will be an enormous market by 2011,” concluded Winterbottom.
     

  • Sybase completes acquisition of mobile 365

    Sybase completes acquisition of mobile 365

    MUMBAI: Sybase, Inc. a provider of enterprise infrastructure and mobile software has announced its completion of the acquisition of Mobile 365, Inc. in an all-cash transaction valued at $417 million. Net of acquired cash, the transaction is valued at $397 million.

    Mobile 365 will now operate as Sybase 365, a wholly-owned subsidiary. Sybase Inc. senior vice president corporate development and marketing Marty Beard will lead the new subsidiary as president, asserts an official release.

    The Sybase mFolio business will be integrated into Sybase 365 immediately, and certain assets of Sybase AvantGo will be integrated into Sybase 365 early in 2007, adds the release.

    Sybase chairman, CEO and president John Chen said, “Built on unique intellectual property and a comprehensive global network, Sybase 365 provides the messaging infrastructure-of-choice for interoperability and content delivery. With this acquisition, we expand our unwired enterprise offerings and our ability to deliver information anytime, anywhere, to any type of device.”

    Through its network of approximately 700 mobile operators, including Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Cingular, Telefonica and China Mobile, Sybase 365 will continue to focus on enabling the content providers and global brands, such as Citibank, Yahoo!, AOL, MSN and Twentieth Century Fox to mobilise their content and applications.

    Verizon Wireless vice president wireless internet and multimedia services Jim Straight said, “As we approach the fifth anniversary of Mobile 365 launching carrier services here in the U.S., i’m pleased they have found a corporate parent who brings additional resources and opportunities to the market and that Mobile 365 will continue to serve us as they have in the past.”

    “The acquisition solidly positions Sybase between mobile operators, content providers, and global brands-further extending our worldwide leadership in enterprise mobility,” said Beard.

  • Vivendi files a corrupt organisations complaint against T-Mobile

    Vivendi files a corrupt organisations complaint against T-Mobile

    MUMBAI: Global European media conglomerate Vivendi has announced that it filed a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act (Rico) complaint in federal court in the State of Washington in the US.

    The charge is that T-Mobile illegally appropriated Vivendi’s $2.5 billion investment in Polish mobile telecom operator Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa (PTC), through a pattern of fraud and racketeering.

    Named in the complaint are T-Mobile USA, T-Mobile Deutschland, Deutsche Telekom AG and . Zygmunt Solorz-Zak, who controls another Polish company Elektrim, which is Vivendi’s joint-venture partner for its investment in PTC.

    According to the suit, this case involves two companies, Vivendi and T- Mobile, that have substantial business activities in the US, one of whom (T-Mobile) colluded with Mr. Solorz-Zak in a pattern of racketeering activity over US wires as part of an unlawful scheme to take over an enterprise, PTC, and corrupt another enterprise, Elektrim.

    Vivendi says that it considers that T-Mobile and Mr. Solorz’ Elektrim illegally appropriated its $2.5 billion investment in PTC and, at every turn, have defied court orders. By filing this Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act complaint, it is asking the court for a simple remedy – give back its money or its PTC shares.

  • BSG to manage mobile call volume during Fifa World Cup

    BSG to manage mobile call volume during Fifa World Cup

    MUMBAI: BSG Clearing Solutions GmbH, the communications service industry’s clearing and settlement provider, today announced that its systems are well prepared to deal with the heavy increase in capacity for roaming clearing that will result from the growth in mobile call volume during the weeks of the 2006 FIFA World Cup.

    “This will be the biggest sporting event in the world and mobile communications will have an unprecedented role in spectator enjoyment this year. As the exclusive roaming partner for virtually all wireless operators in Germany, BSG will be on hand to ensure there are no ‘own goals’ behind the scenes,” said BSG CEO Roland J. Bopp.

    An estimated five million fans from all continents around the globe, supporting the 32 nationalities taking part, are expected to visit Germany during the four-week World Cup competition. Mobile phones will be used to relay messages, download content, send pictures and texts to friends and family, as well as to record goals and highlights. Companies are already promoting World Cup-related content, such as player photos, historic video clips, ring tones and games, and operators are expecting intense traffic volumes in largely unpredictable spikes.

    All German wireless operators, including T-Mobile and O2, are BSG clients and will be relying on the company to process and clear all roaming transactions.

    “Our system ordinarily handles large volumes of traffic and is designed to scale accordingly so that it can easily handle the additional anticipated traffic. Nonetheless, we’ve taken the cautionary validation steps to ensure our system will continue to operate smoothly throughout this period of expected transaction spike so our customers are provided with the same high-quality level of service to which they’re accustomed,” said BSG chief technology officer Abie Reifer.

    “We’re proud to be part of this important, global event and are confident in BSG’s ability to fully support us. Knowing they’ll be handling the increase in mobile call volume allows us to focus on giving our customers the best experience possible,” said O2 Germany vice president carrier and international services Dirk Schmelzer.

  • T-Mobile acquires rights for 2006 football World Cup for seven European firms

    T-Mobile acquires rights for 2006 football World Cup for seven European firms

    MUMBAI: Football’s governing body Fifa’s marketing agency Infront Sports and Media has signed an extensive agreement with mobile phone operator T-Mobile International for mobile broadcast rights covering all 64 matches of the 2006 Fifa World Cup

    The deal covers seven European territories including host country Germany, Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and the United Kingdom.

    T-Mobile acquired the rights for the non-exclusive transmission of near-live and/or delayed video clips of key match footage such as goals via mobile networks to mobile phones. Additionally the rights package includes access to archive video material of the 2002 Fifa World Cup.

    In Germany, T-Mobile is entitled to offer live streaming transmissions of 20 selected 2006 FIFA World Cup matches to its customers. The transmission is possible over telecommunications networks (GPRS/UMTS) on a pay basis.

    Infront executive director Oliver Seibert said, “We are delighted about this extensive agreement with T-Mobile as the mobile arm of Deutsche Telekom, one of the official partners of the 2006 Fifa World Cup. In Europe, mobile broadcast rights agreements have now been signed covering most of the important football markets. This guarantees a strong mobile coverage during the 2006 Fifa World Cup reaching millions of fans.”