Thumbing Around
By AZAM on March 18, 2008Thumbplay has carved a very interesting niche in the wireless entertainment space. It solved a very important problem with gaming industry. They go directly to user and avoid the problems and hassles of carriers put in the way. In essence Thumbplay is a publisher and distributor of content & games that deal directly with user and offer a subscription package. The business model works because game makers have a way to reach the market with their content and Thumb play provides a platform for other content creators and publisher to distribute and mange their revenues. Thumbplay offers an advantage by being more transparent solution that content creators have the ability to monitor performance and achieve better revenues directly from uses on platform. Insiders mentioned that revenues is growing at a fast clip and approaching 100M in revenues, and the business of subscription is putting up quite attractive numbers.
Thumbplay plans to use the new capital to expand its direct-to-consumer product offerings, in addition to further developing the tools it provides content owners, creators, publishers and brand marketers. The company also plans to accelerate its strategic growth plans and to expand internationally in 2008 to meet the growing demand for mobile entertainment content around the world, including the possibility of identifying potential acquisitions that will help advance its leadership position in the worldwide mobile content industry.
“Thumbplay’s unique off-deck model for selling a wide variety of mobile entertainment content to consumers has already proven to be very successful here in the U.S. and we’re now ready to extend the positive customer experience we already deliver to the millions of mobile consumers all around the world,” added Traasdahl.
With more than 80,000 pieces of mobile entertainment content under license, including ringtones, wallpapers, games, videos, voice tones and text-based services, Thumbplay has built a strong consumer following and gained broad recognition as a leader in the direct-to-consumer mobile content space.
During the last quarter of 2007, Thumbplay announced deals to integrate its mobile entertainment content catalog into the Web and mobile portals of AOL and MSN Mobile, as well as iLike, one of the Web’s leading social music discovery services. Earlier this year, Thumbplay signed a digital distribution agreement to add content from Sony BMG Music Entertainment’s artists to Thumbplay’s already diverse mobile entertainment content catalog.
Eric Hippeau, a managing partner with SoftBank, said Thumbplay has evolved with the market while claiming the largest market share as a seller of multiple forms of mobile content, including games, ringtones, music, wallpapers, videos, voice tones and text-based services. The company was recently adjudged the market leader in non-carrier revenues by research firm A.C. Nielsen & Co. in its Mobile Content Storefront Revenue report covering the third and fourth quarters for 2007.
“They have grown tremendously and are clearly the market leader, and this is a classic expansion round from classic late-stage investors, Hippeau said. “They are twice the size of their nearest competitor, and what they are developing is continuing to grow as they build a catalog of licensed content and community of users.”
Mobile content publisher Thumbplay Inc. announced mit picked up a pair of late-stage crossover investors and $18 million in expansion capital in a fifth investment round that brings total equity investment in the four-year-old company to $54 million.
New York-based Thumbplay landed Brookside Capital Inc. of Boston and Cross Creek Capital of Salt Lake City as lead investors in the deal, joining previous venture investors i-Hatch Ventures and Redwood Partners LLC, both of New York; Softbank Capital of Boston; Bain Capital Ventures of New York; Meritech Capital Partners of Palo Alto, Calif.; and New Enterprise Associates of Baltimore.
Tags : Thumplay, wireless content