Handango helps retailers provide mobile phone content, and has just raised $60.5M in a round of backing led by two Silicon Valley venture firms, ITV and ATV, according to a report in VentureWire this morning.
ITV, you'll recall, just invested a good deal of money into Cortina, to buy Intel's optical chip business, a story we covered yesterday. So this is just the latest big bet by ITV in the communications area.
Here is the VentureWire story (sub required).
What we don't understand, however, is how this company is more than just a middleman. It is offering downloads of content gotten from producers of that content, and wants to be "the leading retailer of content" for smart phones, according to Bill Wiberg, a general partner with ATV and Handango board member, as quoted by VentureWire. That hardly sounds like focus. We'll have to find out more details about this company, before commenting further.
This is the seven-year-old Hurst, Tex. company's second round, after a $18 million first round, VentureWire reported. It is Sandy Miller's first real investment for ITV since joining the firm from 3i, where he invested in Vonage, among other companies.