TORONTO - May 27, 2010 - The BlackBerry® Partners Fund today announced the expansion of its investment activities with the launch of a US$100 million affiliate fund focused on mobile investment opportunities in China. BlackBerry Partners Fund China is a new joint venture between China Broadband Capital Partners, a leading venture capital and private equity manager focused on media and communications investments in China since 2006, and BlackBerry Partners Fund. The new Fund will invest exclusively in opportunities supporting the emerging mobile ecosystem in China, the world's largest mobile market. The new Fund is expected to close on August 31, 2010."The BlackBerry platform offers tremendous opportunities for startups and other technology innovators to develop new value-added products and services for the mobile market," said Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO of Research In Motion. "We are very excited by the announcement of this new fund and we believe it will help fuel substantial innovation and commercial success within the mobile ecosystem in China."
"The launch of BlackBerry Partners Fund China will further extend the benefits of our partnership with Research In Motion and position us to take better advantage of attractive investments in one of the fastest growing mobile computing markets in the world," said Kevin Talbot co-managing partner of BlackBerry Partners Fund.
"China Broadband Capital Partners is pleased to work with BlackBerry Partners Fund to explore investment opportunities and promote the development of mobile technologies and applications in China," said Edward Tian, Chairman of China Broadband Capital Partners. "BlackBerry Partners Fund China represents an incredible opportunity to support technology entrepreneurs in China who are shaping the future of mobile computing, and we look forward to making the Fund the leading investment vehicle for mobile in China."
"Edward Tian is a thought leader not only in China's venture capital market but also on the global stage," said John Albright, co-managing partner of BlackBerry Partners Fund. "He and his team of highly experienced investors bring invaluable local experience to our global fund."
About BlackBerry Partners Fund China
BlackBerry Partners Fund China is the leading independent venture capital firm focused on mobile computing in the People's Republic of China. The fund is the exclusive China affiliate of the BlackBerry Partners Fund. With offices in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, the fund leverages the unparalleled domain expertise of Research In Motion, the foresight and investment savvy of the BlackBerry Partners Fund team and China Broadband Capital's proven track record in China's telecom, Internet, broadband, media and technology sectors. Further information is available at http://www.bbpfchina.com.
About China Broadband Capital Partners
CBC is a China-based private equity firm focused on media and communications investments. Since the firm was founded in 2006, CBC has been recognized as one of the most influential investors in telecom, Internet, broadband, media and technology sectors in China. With its strong industry expertise and connections, the firm has enabled multiple value creation for its portfolio companies and established a leading position in investment in media and communications sectors. Further information is available at http://www.cbc-capital.com.
About BlackBerry Partners Fund
BlackBerry Partners Fund is the leading independent venture capital firm focused exclusively on mobile computing. The Fund invests in companies that support the mobile ecosystem, including hardware and software to enable the mobile Internet, mobile applications and mobile computing infrastructure. In collaboration with Research In Motion, the global fund brings capital, resources and unparalleled domain expertise to the partnerships it forms with exceptional entrepreneurs around the world who are shaping the future of the mobile market. For further information visit: www.blackberrypartnersfund.com."
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Aepona provides products and services to Telcos globally, enabling them to adopt the emerging Network as a Service (NaaS) business model and unleash the full power of their network assets. With NaaS, Telcos can profit from the current trend towards Mobile Cloud Computing by publishing and monetizing their assets as Web-based APIs towards Enterprises, Web-Based Service Providers and Application Developers.
Aepona's products are used by operators globally to power 1.2 billion monthly transactions and deliver $1 billion annual revenues to operators, application and content providers. Aepona is also the technology provider for the GSMA's OneAPI initiative. For more information, visit www.aepona.com.
buzzd is a location-sensitive entertainment listings service with branded editorial and real-time user generated content on the mobile device."Your city, in real-time," buzzd allows consumers to know what's happening at any venue right now, rate events, and connect with friends and people in the area. The buzzd platform brings together the freshest local event listings, up-to the minute nightlife reviews and integrated social networking features to keep you and your friends connected and plugged into the hottest buzz wherever you are. buzzd has partnered with carriers and content providers such as Helio, Virgin Mobile, Alltel, metroPCS, AT&T, Flavorpill, Time Out, ZAGAT, Metromix, Citysearch and many more.
Digby is a leader in the mcommerce platform market. The Company's service is a mobile commerce software platform that enables consumers to purchase physical goods and services from their mobile device and provides merchants with a turn-key infrastructure for mcommerce deployment. It has built a significant competitive advantage over direct and indirect competitors in the market with a rich yet simple user experience, patent pending mobile catalogue and location-based offer process, merchant analytics services and a write-once, deploy-to-many architecture.
Digby has built and launched both the Powered by Digby ("PbD") platform and Digby Marketplace. PbD is a turn-key infrastructure that enables merchants, carriers, payments providers and hardware manufacturers to create and manage a branded mcommerce storefront as part of a multichannel retail experience for their customers. To date the Company has launched 1800 Flowers and Godiva stores on the BlackBerry platform. The Digby Marketplace is a virtual mall application that is downloaded to a mobile device enabling a consumer to browse for items for sale from major national brands all within the same application. To date the Company has partnered with leading national brands including Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, FTD, Godiva, Wine.com, OfficeMax, Drugstore.com, Overstock.com, and Sears Toys.
Neuralitic Systems was founded in January 2007 with a mission to help mobile service operators understand the mobile data user behaviours that influence data service adoption, so that they can automatically uncover new trends and habits and dynamically leverage these emerging behaviours to ignite data revenue growth.
Business intelligence (BI) is moving to centre stage in the telecom industry, as operators shift their focus from subscriber acquisition to better understanding their data service buying patterns and habits. In today's environment characterized by market saturation (over 30 markets have reached 100% penetration), high cost of customer acquisition and flattening voice revenues, operators are under pressure to embrace BI tools to reduce churn, maximize non-voice and IP services revenues and differentiate themselves in the marketplace.
Nexage is a leading developer of mobile advertising solutions that enable companies to maximize profitability from their mobile properties. Founded in 2006, its leading product is AdMax, a hosted Ad Optimization Platform that enables premium mobile publishers to fully control and maximize the profitability of their mobile services. It enables mobile publishers to maximize revenues from mobile ads while reducing internal operating expenses by more efficiently connecting to multiple ad networks.
With customers that include Reuters and Nokia, Nexage has excellent early market traction in capturing some of the world's most premium mobile publishers and will look to extend their customer base by continuously adding enhanced value to the AdMax platform.
SocialDeck is a cross-platform, social gaming company based in Toronto, Canada with a vision of enabling anytime, anywhere, anyone gaming. socialDeck connects fragmented players and communities across platforms including Facebook, BlackBerry and iPhone and adds a social context to existing mobile and social games. The company was founded in July 2008 by Anish Acharya and Jeson Patel.
WorldMate's mission is to help ensure that travellers are never stranded, never late and never lost. WorldMate Live, their flagship product, is a travel service that makes it easy for business travelers to plan and manage their trips. It is the only service that serves your needs both before and during travel by automatically assembling an entire itinerary, including meetings, in one place and ensuring your personal web site, calendar and mobile device are always in sync. Unlike all other Web and mobile sites or SMS flight alerts, WorldMate Live roams with you in real time, delivering relevant information, warning of potential pitfalls, and making it easy to resolve issues, so your trip is as efficient and enjoyable as possible.
WorldMate turns your mobile device into your personal travel assistant. It provides valuable travel information and resources and keeps you out of trouble while you're on the road. WorldMate users can find out when their flights are canceled or delayed directly on their mobile phones. In addition, travelers inconvenienced by last-minute changes can check updated flight schedules to rebook quickly and save time at the airport. WorldMate includes a host of free services such as Weather Forecasts, World Clocks, a Currency Converter, a World Day/Night Map and many others. Premium services, available for a nominal subscription fee, include real-time Flight Status for more than 175 airlines and Flight Schedules for over 800 airlines.
Xobni is a San Francisco, California based startup that is revolutionizing the way people manage, organize, and search Outlook email. Xobni is a relationship management tool that offers lightning fast search and organization of your inbox. Xobni creates profiles for each person that emails you. These profiles contain relationship statistics, contact information, social connections, threaded conversations, and shared attachments.
The company was founded in the spring of 2006 by Adam Smith and Matt Brezina, launched to private beta in September 2007 and opened to the public in May 2008. Xobni is funded by Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, Cisco Systems, First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures, Atomico Investments, BlackBerry Partners Fund and others.
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