Software
firm Tanla Solutions said its Singapore unit will acquire Finland-based mobile
payment services company Openbit Oy in an all-cash deal that values the Finnish
company at $18.60 million.
subsidiary, Tanla Mobile Asia Pacific Pte, will initially acquire 85% of the
total shareholding of Openbit. It will buy the balance in two tranches of 5%
and 10% over two years, the company said in a statement.
acquisition will put the $119 million Tanla in a stronger position to tap
deeper into the global mobile payments market that is estimated to be worth
over $11 billion by 2011.
to some estimates, more than a billion subscribers would be using their mobiles
for the purchase of both physical and digital goods globally over the next
three years.
posted revenues of $15.88 million in calendar 2007 and had cash equivalents of
$3.04 million at the end of the year.
provides software vendors and content distributors secure means to distribute
and process payments of mobile content for use by end customers globally and
has billing agreements with nearly 90 operators in over 30 countries accepting
all major credit cards.
include Nokia and some of the largest Independent Software Vendors like
Symantec, F-Secure and Quickoffice and gaming companies like 3D Arts and
Gamelion.
proven business model with a unique value proposition around on-device payment,
with an installed base of over 20 million Symbian OS-enabled Nokia handsets
worldwide, Uday Reddy, CMD Tanla said.
handset providers like LG and Samsung too use Openbit’s License Manager for
their S-60 series handsets, talks are on with others like Motorola and HTC to
provide the same, Arto Lehtonen, CEO Openbit told DNA Money.
