China Mobile Buys Stake In Phoenix Satellite Television Holdings For Content Partnership

China Mobile has bought a 19.9% stake in Phoenix Satellite Television Holdings, a unit of STAR Group, itself a unit of News Corp. The deal is part of a strategic alliance between China Mobile and Phoenix (and by extension STAR and News Corp) around mobile content. STAR Group’s interest in Phoenix will be reduced to 17.6 pct from 37.5 pct.
From the press release: “By leveraging the content assets and interactive services of News Corporation and STAR, the partners will combine their strengths to develop wireless media services based on China Mobile’s mobile platform, through which China Mobile serves over 260 million subscribers. The cooperation will explore wireless media business opportunities on a global basis…Key areas of the cooperation will include development, production, aggregation and distribution of a wide array of wireless services ranging from music, broadband interactivity, and social networking to multimedia value- added products.”
Basically, China Mobile gets access to a lot of content for its mobile service, especially important for any upcoming 3G service it may get to launch one day, and News Corp and its subsidiaries get a direct line into China via the world largest mobile carrier.
The financial aspects of the deal were not revealed, but Reuters suggested figures of US$130 million and US$180 million, from different sources.

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