Leading Indian equipment vendor buys Finnish Openbit

Details: Category: Wireless Networks; 30 June 2008; 12194 views

Tanla, a leading provider of Telecom infrastructure headquartered in Hyderabad, India has announced its acquisition of Openbit, of Tampere, Finland for $US18.6 million...

Tanla, a leading provider of Telecom infrastructure headquartered in Hyderabad, India has announced its acquisition of Openbit, of Tampere, Finland for $US18.6 million.

Tanla is taking an initial 85% stake in Openbit who are a leading provider of global on device payments for mobile applications. The deal demonstrates the increasing confidence and resources of Asian companies as they seek to expand globally. The acquisition of Openbit extends Tanla's payments portfolio beyond operator billing products to address the emerging market for rich media & business applications on handsets.

Commenting on the deal Mr. Uday Reddy, CMD Tanla Solutions Ltd. said " Openbit gives us an opportunity to serve more customers in the international markets, and fortifies Tanla as a leading mobile solutions organization, in line with its vision to become a global end to end applications and solutions provider. We hope to integrate our operations at the earliest to benefit from the tremendous synergies available to us."

Openbit is a provider of solutions that seamlessly integrate on-device payment and digital rights management (DRM) for mobile applications. The Company has an installed base of over 20 million Symbian OS-enabled Nokia handsets worldwide and provides software vendors and content distributors with efficient and secure means to distribute and process payment of mobile content for end-users globally. Openbit has established global billing agreements that allow convenient payment of mobile content with nearly 90 operator networks in over 30 countries and with all major credit cards worldwide.

Juniper Research estimates the market opportunity in the mobile payments market segment to be in excess of $11 Billion by 2011, a third of which would be on account of retail and ticketing segments. The drivers for this growth can be attributed to convenience and increasing use of feature rich phones. Industry estimates for feature and Smartphone shipments by 2011 exceed 870 Million, registering far higher CAGR as compared with Voicephones. More than 1 Billion subscribers would be using their mobiles for the purchase of both physical and digital goods globally over the next 3 years.

With this acquisition Tanla will get a strong footing in this burgeoning market with access to pedigree proprietary technology and applications. Openbit has original equipment vendor status with leading mobile phone manufacturers globally. Tanla will also be integrating its global aggregator platforms with the acquired company to enable end users to be billed by Premium SMS and also help leverage more than 90 operator relationships to facilitate its objective of global connectivity.

About Tanla Solutions: Tanla is a leading provider of Telecom infrastructure headquartered in Hyderabad, India with offices in London, New York, Dubai, Singapore, Dublin and Colombo. It is listed on the both the National and Mumbai Stock Exchanges. For the financial year ending 31st March 2008, Tanla recorded Revenues in excess of $119 Million and Net Profits of more than $40 Million. Tanla was awarded the Deloitte Fast 50 award and named as the Sixth fastest growing company in India as part of the Deloitte survey. It's subsidiary business Tanla Mobile is one of the youngest and fasted growing Network Aggregators in the UK. Tanla Mobile is a leading innovator of next-generation mobile application solutions, m-commerce and interactive services. Tanla Mobile specialises in developing mobile applications and platforms for the Mobile Telecoms, Media and Digital Communications sector. Tanla Mobile works in partnership with global mobile operators across Asia, Europe and North America to deliver and bill mobile content over SMS, WAP, MMS, Video, etc. Its product suite includes Mobile Payments Solutions, Campaign Management, Content Management, 3G Video Management and Interactive TV Management applications, all of which are supported by powerful online reporting and CRM tools.

More info: