Motricity gets its mobile aggregator

Motricity may have failed to acquire m-Qube after VeriSign snatched up the company last spring, but Motricity wound up still getting the mobile transaction aggregator it wanted. Today it announced the purchase of GoldPocket Wireless, a U.S. transaction broker with an off-deck mobile content business to boot.

Both companies are private so Motricity disclosed no purchase price for the acquisition, but mobile commerce companies have been going at a premium since the mobile content industry began consolidating in earnest earlier this year. Aside from the $250 million VeriSign paid for m-Qube, Amdocs grabbed Qpass for $275 million. Also recently Wireless Services Corp. acquired Mobile Media North America for an undisclosed amount.

Who got what aggregator is of little concern to Motricity since with GoldPocket's assets and customers the content platform provider fills two holes in its business plan rather than just one, said Ryan Wuerch, chairman and CEO of Motricity. While shopping for an aggregator to handle the billing and settlement of mobile transactions for its customers, Motricity had also been looking to extend its content platform presence off-portal, untying its Fuel platform from the carrier decks it built its business on, Wuerch said. Motricity had been forced to go to third-party providers for those services, but now with the current wave of consolidation, many of those third parties are becoming Motricity’s competitors.

“It was always Motricity managing those relationships before, but now Motricity is delivering the entire solution, A to Z,” Wuerch said.

The combine company will have relationships with six of the top 10 carriers in the U.S., including the largest Cingular Wireless, and a healthy customer roster of television networks, thanks to deals struck by GoldPocket in the last year. NBC, CBS, CNN and Fox have all contracted with GoldPocket to power promotions and mobile sales for individual shows like The Apprentice and CSI as well as event programming like the Olympics. Motricity’s Fuel platform powers the online portals for whole media brands, including BET Mobile.