Chantilly, VA, September 6, 2006 -Sybase Inc. has become the latest large company to get into the business of managing mobile phone messaging services, by agreeing to purchase venture-backed Mobile 365 Inc. in an all-cash deal valued at around $400 million.
Sybase Chief Executive John Chen said that the deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year. Chen said that Sybase had been looking for an acquisition in the mobile messaging market for about a year, based on what he sees as an "endless" number of potential enterprise uses for the technology, from bill payment to marketing platforms. Chen estimated that Mobile 365 is currently able to process over 3 billion text, instant and multimedia messages per month.
Chantilly, Va.-based Mobile 365 has raised at least $27 million in funding from investors including Mayfield Fund, 3i Group PLC, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Institutional Venture Partners. The company, which was formed by the merger of mobile messaging service providers InphoMatch Inc. and Mobileway in August 2004, offers both mobile content management and message delivery platforms, and has customers including Citigroup Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Virgin Group Ltd.
3i Partner Robin Murray and Mayfield Fund Managing Director Kevin Fong declined to comment, while Institutional Venture Partners General Partner Todd Chaffee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There has been widespread speculation about a possible sale of Mobile 365 in recent months, as other competitors in the market for mobile message processing have steadily been snapped up by large companies, or have bulked up with funding. The general demand for these companies' services has peaked as content providers and enterprises begin to view mobile phones as a promising conduit for conducting their businesses.
Mobile content platform m-Qube Inc. was bought by VeriSign Inc. for $250 million earlier this year, and not long after, competitor Qpass Inc. was bought by Amdocs Ltd. for $275 million.
In addition, just last week mobile content platform developer Crisp Wireless Inc. announced that it had raised funding from Meritage Funds after nearly six years of bootstrapping, while Motricity Inc. recently reached about $142 million in funding from backers. SinglePoint, formerly Wireless Services Corp., also chimed in last week by closing a $31 million round that bumped its total funding to $47 million.
In a prepared release, Sybase said that for its fiscal year ended March 31, Mobile 365 had some $90 million in revenue, adding that the company delivers messages via networks operated by numerous carriers internationally including Verizon Wireless, Vodafone Group PLC and Cingular Wireless LLC.
