Mobile Content Retailer Thumbplay Gets $18 Million Funding
This story was written by Rafat Ali.
Thumbplay, the mobile content retailer which is rumored to be on sale, is apparently not. It has raised a big $18 million fifth round, from its previous investors and new ones. The investors in this round include Softbank Capital, i-Hatch Ventures and *Verizon* Investments.
This comes as we reported that Thumbplay had hired Morgan Stanley as a bank to look at strategic options. The company is now powering mobile content for online portals such as AOL (NYSE: TWX) and MSN, and has been working with music labels such as SonyBMG, among others. The company has been trying both the D2C and white-label model for its expansion beyond selling ringtones. It is a tough market for third party aggregators, but it is still early days on a consumer brand in mobile content, and the hope is that with the coming of open networks and high speed data, third party players can play a bigger role than just being beholden to the operators.
By Rafat Ali