MobiTV has raised $100 for mobile TV

November 1, 2006 | Matt Marshall | Comments | |

mobitv.bmpMobiTV, the Emeryville start-up that offers TV and other digital content to your mobile phone and other connected devices, is soaking up the cash.

It has just raised $30 million more in its third round of venture capital, GigaOm reports. This make for a total of $100 million since July — and its valuation reportedly already exceeds $400 million.

Is this company red hot, or is it getting bloated? It started out serving mobile phones. But it has since expanded to support any device with broadband — via any WiFi, or with provider AT&T.

Large investors like Oak need to put their money to work, and so are willing to pay a high price. It has invested the most so far. The latest investors in MobiTV are Hearst Corp. and Adobe Systems. Hearst, of course, has all kinds of media properties, and it would make sense to distribute it over mobile phones and other gadgets. Adobe, meanwhile, is also flush with cash for ventures, having created a new venture arm. And Adobe, too, is interested in digital media distribution. It wants to support Apollo, its new system for running applications written in Flash, HTML, and JavaScript from the desktop.

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Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Luis
    They will burn thru these $70MM like a good cigar to get to the end of nothing. MobiTV was a good idea for 2001 up to 2003 anything beyond that was pure wishful thinking........
  • MobiTV seems like a superfluous service to me. Most 3G phones can now pull streams directly from a source, via mobile friendly formats such as MPEG4 and 3GPP. All MobiTV has to offer are bundling deals for the carriers, but otherwise it is a classic middleman.

    If you want basic cable and muzak on your phone, maybe MobiTV is interesting, but if you want to fetch a stream from your favorite radio station, all you need is a mobile data plan and a media capable handset.

    Where MobiTV fits into the scheme of things in the long run, I don't know.
  • Sherwin
    Ridiculous. How disconnected are these people? Nobody is watching TV on their tiny little phones.