News roundup: 16 October 2007

Many announcements over the last week or so including; InfoSpace sale, Sprint mobile TV content, mobile airline check-in, mobile payments to Verizon Wireless, $412 million to MVNO Virgin USA, Mobile TV and Mobile music firms raise money, Disney.com launch, Firefox mobile coming, Google buys mobile microblogging platform, and Google launch SMS based search in India.

Search specialist InfoSpace has sold its mobile business to Motricity for $135 million. The InfoSpace mobile business included GPS assisted search, messaging and mobile portal products and is used by T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint amongst others.

In the US, Sprint has launched a mobile TV channel with 100% in-house developed content. About 150 two-minutes content pieces will be released each week covering sport, music and news.

Airline checkin using mobile phone barcodes has been given approval by global airline association. Germany’s DBA and Air Canada reportedly already use mobile checkin options.

Mobile payments company Firethorn has made an agreement with Verizon Wireless. Under the agreement the Firethorn payments application will be loaded on Verizon handsets to allow users to complete transactions with Firethorn financial partners.

Mobile Virtual Network Operator, Virgin USA, has raised $412 million in IPO.

Mobile TV firm, Bluestreak Technology, raises US$20 million.

Disney has launched a mobile version of Disney.com which includes streaming video, audio and pictures. The launch comes a few weeks after Disney shut down its MVNO business.

Open source web browser Firefox is coming to mobile handsets.

Mobile microblogging company Jaiku (see our interview) has been acquired by Google.

Mobile music firm Catalyst Mobile has raised $10 million.

Google has launched an SMS based search service in India. See the demo here.