NeuStar Buys Followap for $139M 635096

IP peering and ENUM (electronic numbering) specialist Neustar Inc. (NYSE: NSR) has bought British firm Followap Inc. for a cool $139 million in cash to improve its mobile messaging capabilities, particularly in Europe and Asia. (See NeuStar Buys Followap)

Followap has developed technology that enables mobile operators to offer instant messaging (IM) and presence-based services to their customers by enabling interoperability between the carriers' systems and the Internet portals and messaging gateways that enable IM. (See Followap Touts IM Hub.)

NeuStar forecasts that Followap's revenue will exceed $25 million in 2007 and more than double in 2008. The firm says that at the end of 2005, there were an estimated 12 million mobile IM users worldwide -- expected to double every year between now and 2009, and grow to nearly 200 million by the end of the decade.

Followap, which has been in business since 1999, was privately backed by investors including Carmel Ventures , Star Ventures , and Sequoia Capital . It's not known how much the company had raised.

Read the rest of this article at Unstrung.— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Unstrung