Motorola Empowers Motomusic With Acquisition of Soundbuzz
The mobile phone maker Motorola announced today it will acquire Soundbuzz, a Asian music provider. The financial terms of the deal weren’t discloses and the acquisition will be closed in the first quarter of 2008.

Soundbuzz, a privately-held company is headquartered in Singapore and through licenses from the music studios such as Sony BMG, Universal Music and Warner is the biggest mobile music provider in Asia. The company’s end-to-end system includes subscriber management, content management, payment, client software and media delivery technologies. The company maintains a consumer-facing brand, Soundbuzz, and will continue to provide “white-label” services to carrier customers that offer tailored solutions for Multimedia delivery.

Motorola intends to further extend and develop its MOTOMUSIC service China, into India, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

With 1 billion music-capable mobile phones to be sold until 2010, the mobile music market is a potential gold mine for every company involved in the market. Every major carrier and mobile phone maker is involved in selling music or ringtones to its customers.

In a report released last year the research company Portio Research said the increased consumption of digital music on mobile phones will boost the global music market, with worldwide revenues expected to rise from $32.1 billion in 2006 to $38.8 billion in 2011.

Motorola’s move follows after late last year Microsoft announced the acquisition of the the French company Musiwave, a provider of mobile music entertainment services to operators and media companies.