Market-leading phone maker Nokia on Sept. 17 moved to bolster its mobile advertising front by agreeing to acquire Enpocket for an undisclosed sum…
The Espoo, Finland-based No. 1 handset maker Nokia Corp. announced Monday it will acquire Enpocket, a Boston-based company that offers consumer analytics technologies to flesh out Nokia’s mobile ad strategy in a hot market.
The company posted a statement on its Web site describing the deal, but did not disclose the purchase price it paid for the privately held firm, but said it will use the acquisition to “accelerate the scaling of its mobile advertising business.”
Founded in 2001, Boston-based Enpocket makes a mobile advertising campaign management and delivery system that uses analytics technologies to deliver mobile advertising across multiple platforms including SMS (Short Message Service), MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), the Internet, and video.
“The company employs approximately 120 people.”
Enpocket’s “mature leading edge platform” and expertise make a good fit with Nokia’s own mobile advertising capabilities, said Nokia Chief Technology Officer Tero Ojanpera.
While it is unusual for a handset maker to be jumping into the ad creation and delivery business, it fits with Nokia’s larger push to be a player in the mobile Web space, said JupiterResearch analyst Thomas Husson.
“Nokia is moving from being a pure handset manufacturer to being a service provider,” he said. “Nokia simply wants to deliver a more integrated experience and make sure consumers are ready to pay a premium for their devices.”
The acquisition is part of a larger strategy by Nokia to ensure it is a player in the emerging mobile marketplace, where high-level services are being made increasingly possible by advances in network speed and reach, by improvements in handsets and by consumer confidence in the security of mobile networks.
“Nokia has already announced its intention to be a leading company in consumer Internet services and we believe that mobile advertising will be an important element in monetizing those services for our customers and partners,” Ojanpera said in a statement.
“This acquisition is a game-changing move to bring the reach and depth of Nokia to organize the market across the world, and make it easier for an ecosystem to develop,” he added.
Nokia said in a statement that it plans to leverage Enpocket’s mobile ad platform along with its partnerships with advertisers, publishers and operators.
Enpocket has customers in the US, Asia, and Europe, including Vodafone, Pepsi, MasterCard, Match.com, Chrysalis, TimeOut, Cingular, Telefonica, British Telecom, and Sprint. Its customers include both carriers and the companies with which they do business, most notably Pepsico.
The company also operates offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
As carriers roll out next-generation services — just last week, Sprint Nextel announced the availability of a mobile shopping platform, for instance — handset makers such as Nokia are eager to position themselves as the technology provider best equipped to provide phones to work with those services.
The multi-billion-dollar potential of putting ads in front of consumers via their smartphones and other Web-enabled gadgets has made locking down mobile ad technologies a key focus for phone makers, content providers and search specialists.
Enpocket provides technology and services that allow its clients to deliver mobile advertising through various formats including text and multimedia messages, mobile Internet advertising and video.
Last month, Nokia unveiled a new Internet service named Ovi, which allows consumers to navigate along with playing content ranging from music to games specifically designed for Nokia’s platform.
Ovi includes Nokia Music Store and N-Gage, which allow people to discover, try and buy music and games through Nokia. Also part of Ovi is Nokia Maps, a navigation service that offers maps and city guides to compatible mobile devices.
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL all enable mobile search to help consumers find what they need on mobile gadgets, and The Kelsey Group said in a recent report that the mobile search ad market will blossom over the next five years, topping more than $1.4 billion in 2012.
The Enpocket purchase is not Nokia’s first move into mobile advertising. In March, the company rolled out the Nokia Ad Service as a managed service for advertisers to conduct targeted advertising on mobile services and applications.
Enpocket’s Boston headquarters will become the worldwide center of Nokia’s mobile advertising efforts; it said, with the firm’s CEO, Mike Baker, heading up that unit.
The deal is the latest in a series of mobile advertising deals in the area. In May, AOL LLC bought Boston mobile advertising network developer Third Screen Media Inc. for an undisclosed amount. In the spring 2006, California’s VeriSign Inc. paid $250 million for Watertown mobile channel developer m-Qube Inc.
For Nokia, Enpocket plays into the company’s increased focus on leading the market for consumer Internet services, which the phone maker has lumped under the brand name Ovi.