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NewBay expands with InAMobile acquisition

Irish mobile solutions firm NewBay Software has acquired the UK handheld applications developer InAMobile, for an undisclosed sum.  The Dublin-based company said on Thursday that the acquisition would significantly enhance its product range and adds leading mobile operators to its customer base. "InAMobile's worldclass handset and mobile imaging technology significantly enhances our solutions for mobile operators by providing a better subscriber experience," said NewBay Software's CEO Paddy Holahan. "We welcome InAMobile's management and team and look forward to capturing a greater share of the mobile services market." NewBay, which was established in 2002, is a provider of social networking applications such as FoneShare, which enables users within a community to legally share ringtones, music, wallpaper and games with each other.

Among the other solutions the firm has developed are FoneBlog, which allows users to create and maintain weblogs using their phones, and FonePIM, an application which enables mobile owners to store and retrieve mobile information such as their address book, tasks, calendar and notes online. The company's applications have been deployed by a number of leading mobile operators including O2 and T-Mobile USA. In 2004, the firm raised EUR3.2 million in venture capital from Benchmark Capital in order to expand its operations and launch new products. As part of the new funding round, Benchmark Capital partner and former Esat Digifone boss Barry Maloney joined the NewBay board. InAMobile is a developer of handset applications such as Pixota, which provide image upload and viewing capabilities across Java, Symbian and BREW platforms.

The firm, which was set up in 2003, also offers an MMS-postcard service that allows users to turn images captured on their handsets into physical postcards to be delivered to any address in the world by entering information on a handset. InAMobile's mobile imaging solutions have been deployed by leading mobile network operators including Orange, Vodafone, O2, Bell Mobility and Carphone Warehouse. "NewBay has an excellent track record in building revenue-generating mobile blogging communities for operators worldwide and we are excited to be part of one of the fastest growing companies in this space," said Nagappan Arunachalam, CEO of InAMobile.