Tuesday, September 12, 2006
News Corp. has purchased a controlling interest in Jamba, the ringtone company created by VeriSign. The $188 million give News Corp. a 51% interest in the public-owned company.
Jamba, and its American brand Jamster, will be merged into News Corp.’s Mobizzo. Mobizzo sells short video clips of television series. It is expected MySpace will integrate the ringtone sales somehow into News Corp.’s social networking website MySpace; MySpace recently announced it would sell music on its website.
News Corp President and CEO Peter Chernin commented to Reuters that “wireless technology gives us an enormous opportunity to reach billions of mobile phone users with our content”.
The announcement was made this morning by News Corporation, which owns MySpace.