CTIA: News Corp. Buying 51 Percent Of VeriSign's Jamba For $187.5 Million

News Corp, in search of a strategy on the mobile side of things after pioneering some early efforts in mobile content, has bought a majority (51 percent) of Verisign-owned mobile content firm Jamba/Jamster, for about $187.5 million. The site Jamba will be merged with News Corp's own lukewarm mobile content site/service Mobizzo. Jamba brand name is used in Germany and other European countries... Jamster is used in UK and U.S.. According to the WSJ, the merged company will keep the better-known Jamba name; Fox Mobile Entertainment president Lucy Hood will be CEO. VeriSign, which acquired Berlin-based Jamba in 2004 for $266 million, will keep 49 percent. The acquisition never really fit with VeriSign but should fit right in with Fox's ambitious mobile sales plans.
This is not the Fox Interactive Media side; this is the FEM side which doesn't really work with FIM (political issues internally)... Fox Interactive has a separate mobile division, headed by John Smelzer.
Jamba's mandate: as explained in the WSJ story, it will be to primarily increase Fox mobile presence in Europe and other places, where Jamba has traditionally been strong. Among its first offerings will be ringtones, wallpaper and short clips from "The Simpsons," available for a yet-to-be determined monthly subscription fee next year. In addition, Jamba will sell content through MySpace.com, which means that it will come out of the FIM pie.
Jamba division generated about $500 million last year, but this year has been brutal, and will fall to about $300 million, according to Verisign expectations, due to European troubles as we have detailed here before.

(c) MocoNews as rewright from WSJ