LOS ANGELES—News Corp. and VeriSign announced plans to form a mobile entertainment joint venture in which News Corp. will have a controlling interest in VeriSign’s Jamba subsidiary. News Corp. said it plans to pay $188 million for the ability to combine Jamba with Fox Mobile Entertainment assets.
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The companies said their new venture will retain the Jamster brand in the United States and the Jamba brand elsewhere. Jamba serves 30 territories with a potential reach of more than one billion mobile subscribers.
The new entity will launch as a vertically integrated mobile entertainment company with capabilities to produce, market, sell and distribute mobile content.
Lucy Hood, formerly president of Fox Mobile Entertainment, has taken on the chief executive position of the new company, which will have key centers in Los Angeles and Berlin.
“Wireless technology gives us an enormous opportunity to reach billions of mobile phone users with our content,” commented Peter Chernin, president and chief executive of News Corp.
Founded in 2000, Jamba said it has a real-time ability to track and optimize marketing, and thus can quickly react to consumer needs and interests in order to monetize products and services.
News Corp.’s Fox Mobile Entertainment group got its start with American Idol text voting, which generated nearly 65 million text messages this past season, up from 12,000 messages during the first season in 2001. The company also invented the Mobisodes Series category, which led with the “24: Conspiracy” and launched the first ad-sponsored video series, “Prison Break: Proof of Innocence.” The company also launched Mobizzo, a cross-carrier mobile entertainment service for consumers.
The new Jamba is set to offer a wide aggregation of content from music and media companies, as well as original content created exclusively for mobile applications. Jamba partners include: Universal Music Group and Warner Music, among others. In addition, Jamba and Fox Mobile Studios have units that create original content ranging from Crazy Frog, to multiple animated characters, to genres such as Manga, Activism, and X-Sports.
Additionally, the new company will become the largest customer for VeriSign’s Digital Content Services group, which offers infrastructure and connectivity solutions to deliver rich content over mobile and broadband networks. Fox’s Mobizzo unit and Jamba are existing customers of DCS.
The first products expected to be released under the new Jamba are:
—MySpace Mobile Store – an alliance with MySpace whereby Jamba will be MySpace’s global m-commerce partner. Jamba will build an m-commerce engine to enable MySpace users to download ringtones, graphics and animations from top music and media companies.
—The Simpsons Mobile – Jamba will exclusively offer mobile content from the popular Fox series, “The Simpsons,” through a subscription package tied to exclusive content called the “Yellow Plan” which will include an array of Simpsons-related mobile content, such as wallpapers, screensavers, ringtones and video.
The companies said they expect their joint venture transaction to be finalized by the end of 2006.
