Synchronica, a provider of mobile email and synchronization solutions, has today announced that it is acquiring consumer mobile email specialist AxisMobile for US$4.9 million in new Synchronica shares. Synchronica also stated that it has raised additional funds of US$10million, from new and existing institutional investors, which brings the total funding secured in 2008 to US$18 million. The company says that the additional funds will be used to accelerate product integration and fuel the growth of the combined business in emerging markets such as China, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Latin America.
The AxisMobile acquisition is said to be aimed at making Synchronica the leading player in mass market mobile email and synchronization middleware for mobile operators and service providers. The addition of AxisMobile's complementary technology, customer base and routes to market, combined with the injection of $10 million of additional funds, is planned to enable Synchronica to provide mass-market mobile email solutions that work on more than three billion mobile phones in the market today.
AxisMobile's consumer mobile email platform is said to complement Synchronica's Mobile Gateway software by adding ‘email to SMS' and ‘email to MMS' gateways as well as a client-less solution for WAP/xHTML browser access. AxisMobile's patented Optimizer email transcoding gateway further adds the ability to display a large variety of attachments such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint presentations on standard feature phone handsets that would otherwise be unable to support such functionality.
The AxisMobile acquisition is also aimed at enlarging Synchronica's footprint in emerging markets, by adding a sales force and key customer contracts in the relatively untapped areas of Eastern Europe, CIS and Russia, to Synchronica's existing sales presence in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Currently AxisMobile has eight live customer installations with major mobile operators, predominantly in CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) and China. Customers include: MTS (the largest mobile operator in Russia and CIS with 84 million customers), Megafon (a Russian mobile network operator with 34 million customers across 88 regions of the Russian federation including its Moscow subsidiary Sonic Duo), T-Mobile, IXI Mobile (consumer backends for US, Switzerland, Turkey, Uruguay), E-Plus (Germany´s third largest mobile network operator with 13.6 million customers), as well as a major Chinese bank. AxisMobile has also secured contract wins with a leading Ukrainian mobile network operator, a further leading tier one Russian mobile network operator and a leading Swiss mobile network operator.
Commenting on the acquisition, Synchronica CEO Carsten Brinkschulte said: "The fundraising and the acquisition of AxisMobile is a dramatic acceleration for Synchronica and I believe that it will build value for our shareholders. We aim to build a world leader in the market of consumer mobile email and synchronization solutions, and this acquisition is a key milestone that will improve our competitive positioning and accelerate our commercial growth. It will increase our ability to sell to customers, particularly to those in emerging economies, where we see the largest potential growth for mobile email and synchronization. With the fundraising and the acquisition of AxisMobile, Synchronica now has sufficient mass and funding to take advantage of the outstanding opportunity to exploit the commercial potential of mass-market mobile email. The next few years will be an exciting time for us all here at Synchronica and for our customers around the globe. We look forward with increased confidence from this inflection point."
Shai Schiller, Executive Chairman of AxisMobile, adds: "This is the start of an exciting new era for AxisMobile and our customers. There are real synergies between Synchronica's products and target markets and our own, so it makes great commercial sense to combine forces. Both companies are committed to open standards and to developing products that work on even the most basic of handsets – a must given that the market for mass market mobile email is being fuelled by demand from the developing world. We are confident that the combined might of our two companies will prove to be greater than the sum of its parts."