IMImobile looks at Europe after Win buy

HELSINKI, FINLAND: Indian telecommunications services and software provider IMImobile hopes to benefit from increasing demand from European operators after it closed its acquisition of Britain's Win Plc on Thursday.

In June mobile entertainment technology firm Win agreed to be bought by privately held IMImobile in a cash deal which valued it at 14.9 million pounds ($23.4 million).

IMImobile bought Win to expand its business with large European operators, many of which have worked with Win.

The resulting company after the acquisition, has a global workforce of over 600, has strong relationships with Tier One mobile operators in Europe and the emerging markets, says IMImobile.

Announcing the completion of the deal, Vishwanath Alluri, Chairman and CEO of IMImobile said: “This is an important step for IMImobile as we aim to create and drive an open global mobile marketplace for new applications and services and to help operators realize the “network-as-a-service” model and make their networks smarter.”

Squeezed by surging mobile data traffic and increasing rivalry from companies like Google and Apple who are selling mobile services directly to consumers, operators are looking increasingly for outside help to boost revenues.

IMImobile says it can boost operators services revenues by 50 percent, partly through better usage of customer data already available in operators' systems.

"We are offering operators a way to value the data in their network," Graham Rivers, Win's former CEO who becomes executive director at IMImobile, told Reuters in an interview.

IMImobile, with a staff of 650 and operations in 70 countries, competes with bigger rivals like Ericsson and Nokia's Nokia Siemens Networks unit.

It has no further acquisitions planned, said Vishwanath Alluri.

"We will focus on the integration, we are not on a acquisition spree," he said.

(With inputs from CIOL)