VeriSign Sells Part of European Mobile Messaging Unit

A part of VeriSign's mobile messaging business in Europe, which was formerly derived in 2006 from the acquisition of Austrian company 3united, is once again, in the ownership of Austrian hands. The new owner is Sinon Invest Holding, and the new name of the company, which specialises in mobile messaging and focuses primarily on the development and delivery of interactive mobile applications, will be mobile messaging solutions (mms).

The Sinon group has over 100 members of staff employed at its sites in Vienna, Salzburg, London, Hamburg and Boston, Los Angeles, Abu Dhabi, Kiev and Moscow.

The financial terms were not disclosed.

This acquisition comes from VeriSign's decision to withdraw from the mobile business sector with an increased focus on the true VeriSign core competences including "naming" (e.g. an allocation of .com domains) and "security" (e.g.SSL encryption),.

Management team with new plans

In addition to the CEO Otto Legerer, the management team of mobile messaging solutions comprises of CFO Peter Kraus (who previously worked for VeriSign as a Financial Manager) and DI Harald Weinberger in the role of CTO.

Harald Weinberger says that the company's future aims are to "continue to expand both the presence in Vienna and the company's activities in Central and Eastern Europe". Furthermore, ongoing technical development and innovation will be encouraged allowing the company to continue its ongoing expansion into exciting new markets in Asia and Africa.

Harald Weinberger stated that "We will shortly be launching some special mobile applications to the market that will also appeal to smaller companies which previously had no access to the possibilities of mobile marketing and its adaption to consumers for reasons linked to costs or know-how."

mms and VeriSign's Messaging and Mobile Media division plan to continue their long-term cooperation within the verticals of mobile Security and mobile International services.

Story updated: 6th Feb 2009 - to clarify that only the Austrian part of the business was sold to Sinon.

Posted to the site on 5th February 2009