Cartagena Capital Newsletter

Cartagena Capital advises Finnish Openbit on the sale of its Multimedia Business to PacketVideo of the US

21. June 2006 -- Openbit to focus on middleware solutions for mobile payment and digital rights management

Openbit Ltd, the leading provider of global on-device payment, superdistribution and digital rights management (DRM) solutions for mobile applications, will place its sole focus on its fast growing License Manager business and further strengthens its technology and services portfolio to better address the needs of the mobile software vendors and content distributors.

Openbit's other business operations will be divested to companies having firm focus on these activities. Openbit's Multimedia business has been acquired by PacketVideo Corporation, and Openbit's Software Market operation has been transferred to Soft Invest Oy. Openbit Ltd will continue to provide Nokia Software Market with technology solutions.

"Our License Manager has provided software vendors with new efficient means to distribute S60 software applications worldwide. Through this move, we will become much stronger to leverage the License Manager solution to new mobile platforms and customer segments", says Arto Lehtonen, CEO of Openbit Ltd. Read More...

Research News

10. July 2006 -- Today Cartagena has released a brand new Research Report on "Mobile TV - the landscape and opportunities for start-ups"

The starting point for looking at mobile TV should not be how the mobile industry is changing, and whether mobile TV represents the ever elusive killer application. A better starting point is how TV itself is changing, and where mobility fits into this picture. The best way, of course, is to try and understand what the users actually want and are prepared to pay for - but this is clearly very difficult to do, with information from pilots often misleading and the Japanese and Korean markets little guide to US and European markets.

So how is TV changing? It is moving fundamentally towards a user driven, on demand, personalized and multi-device experience, far removed from the limitations of broadcast schedules. Options for watching, manipulating and storing TV and video are proliferating. Companies such as BitTorrent (P2P sharing of video on the Internet) and Sling Media, SageTV or Orb Networks (watching 'home' TV on different devices in different locations) are illustrative of this trend and of using interactivity.

The greater capacity and functionality of these new systems is also fundamentally changing content. Take Deutsche Telekom's T-Home IP-TV offering which promises new regional, sports and entertainment content. It can also offer 'time shift' programming to allow users to pause live shows or record them for later viewing.

So the challenge for mobile TV is how to fit into this changing world where TV is increasingly diverse, localized and fragmented. And where a raft of other devices will also offer portability and 'TV on the go', such as products from Mustek (PVR-A1) and Archos (AV420). Click here to download the report ...

Company Profile

Cartagena Capital is an international technology corporate finance company with a special focus on the wireless industry. In 2001, Cartagena Capital was set up by seasoned wireless industry professionals and investment bankers with many years of transactional expertise to provide superior service in the field of M&A, fundraising and strategic advice. Read More...

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