Verisign Turns Its Jamba Into Juice, Sells Stake To News Corp

Verisign purchased German mobile content company Jamba in 2004 for $273M. Sold 51% stake for $187.5M in May 2007 joint venture deal with Fox Mobile Entertainment.
The remaining 49% has been sold to News Corp for an additional $200M.
Jamba aka Jamster made a splash with its ringtone business (Crazy Frog) but a series of lawsuits brought the company back to earth rather quickly. Apparently, people prefer to be told when they’re opting in for a subscription service.
Verisign says:

We’re laser-focused on our three businesses (identity and authentication, SSL and naming)…Our involvement in mobile content helped us recognize what we’re good at.

While this makes sense for Verisign (economic downturn->focus on the core) what would News Corp/Myspace want with a washed out ringtone company.

October 13, 2008 | glu | News Corp |

Comments

Leave a Reply

google.load("language", "1"); var curstate = 0; var hasloaded = 0; function bnc_show_translated() { if (hasloaded == 0) { bnc_lang_callback(); hasloaded = 1; } for (i = 0; i < 0; i++) { var elem = $("bnc_original_" + i); if (elem) { if (curstate) { elem.show(); } else { elem.hide(); } } } for (i = 0; i < 0; i++) { var elem = $("bnc_trans_" + i); if (elem) { if (curstate) { elem.hide(); } else { elem.show(); } } } if (curstate) { $("bnc_trans_state1").show(); $("bnc_trans_state2").hide(); curstate = 0; } else { $("bnc_trans_state1").hide(); $("bnc_trans_state2").show(); curstate = 1; } } function bnc_detect_div(div_id) { var text = document.getElementById(div_id); if (text) { text = text.innerHTML; if (text.length > 0) { google.language.detect(text, function(result) { if (!result.error) { if (result.language != "en") { if (result.confidence > 0.25) { $("bnc_translating").show(); bnc_xlate_div(result.language, div_id, "en"); } } } } ); } } } function bnc_xlate_div(src_lang,div_id,o_lang) { var text = document.getElementById(div_id); if (text) { text = text.innerHTML; google.language.translate(text, src_lang, o_lang, function(result) { var translated = document.getElementById(div_id); if (result.translation) { translated.innerHTML = result.translation; } }); } } function bnc_lang_callback() { } function bnc_startup() { bnc_xlate_div("en", "bnc_translate_info", "en"); bnc_xlate_div("en", "bnc_translate_info2", "en"); } google.setOnLoadCallback(bnc_startup);