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NEWS ACQUISITIONS, MERGERS & AGREEMENTS PacketVideo Lands $100-Million in Funding In the words of PacketVideo Corporation’s CEO, we "beat the odds" by securing nearly $100-million in the midst of an economic slowdown from some of the leading high-tech companies. Among those joining the list of earlier investors, such as Credit Suisse First Boston and Time Warner, are BFD First Global Partners, GE Equity, Intel Capital, Kyocera, Mobile Internet Capital, MTI, Nexus Group, LLC, Motorola, Sun Microsystems, and QUALCOMM. This current round of funding brings the total raised by the privately held company to $140-million.According to James Carol, CEO of PacketVideo, "This new funding will help to propel us into 2001 and beyond and allow us to continue to execute our strategy." The San Diego-based company envisions content from news to multimedia to live viewing streamed over the Internet to a host of wireless devices. PacketVideo’s MPEG-4 compliant software enables the delivery, management, and viewing of multimedia via wireless devices including smartphones, laptops and PDAs. Currently, the San Diego company has 17 trials running in 11 countries, Mr. Carol told Reuters. With this second round of funding, PacketVideo’s three-pronged business model that pulls together all the necessary market segments—wireless networks and infrastructure equipment; wireless silicon and devices and content and applications—is paying off. Alliances with the likes of wireless operators such as Bell Mobility and Soncera; wireless semiconductor providers, including QUALCOMM and Texas Instruments; and handset manufacturers Mitsubishi and HP, which have integrated its technology into their devices, is a testament to the momentum the company has generated in just a few months. For more information: http://www.packetvideo.com/press/view.asp?id=92Mobileinfo Comments and Advisory: Multimedia on wireless is a dream that lot of vendors, especially network infrastructure suppliers and operators have because it is so exciting. Basic technology is not difficult - streaming media is just bits of video information. Challenge is in doing it on 2.5 G and 3G networks in highly compressed and intelligent format so that cost of transmitting rich multi-media is affordable. 3G plans are tremendous scrutiny by the investment community and CFOs. No doubt, there is a potential for certain niche applications. We urge those in this space to concentrate on these aspects of wireless multimedia. Target a specific application, study its economics, project it against proposed costs of packet data on new networks (operators are not sure of cost points) and then optimize the data transmission. Talk to vendors in bandwidth optimization space - Bluekite, Fourelle, Net2Wireless, Flash Networks. Go to http://www.mobileinfo.com/Interviews/Bluekite.htm for more. Note: This news release may contain forward-looking statements. Readers should take appropriate caution in developing plans utilizing these products, services and technology architectures. All trademarks used in this summary are the property of their respective owners. NEWS
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