FEATURE: On the Hot Seat with Motricity CEO Ryan Wuerch

Just two days after announcing its $135 million acquisition of InfoSpace Inc.'s mobile business unit, Motricity CEO Ryan Wuerch talked with FierceMobileContent editor-in-chief Sue Marek about the deal, his vision for the mobile entertainment industry and how this powerhouse company is going to keep its competitive edge.  

FierceMobileContent:  Why did you decide to acquire InfoSpace's mobile business?  

Wuerch: InfoSpace Mobile Services, I believe, has created some of the leading technology for the deliver of mobile content and data in the industry. This transaction, for me, has been two years in the making. Approximately two years ago I believed that the strongest other company in the industry doing much of what we do was InfoSpace Mobile Services. Looking at the breadth and depth of their management team as well as the products that they have been developing, combined with our management team and executives and our employees and the technology and products we develop, there is not another combination that creates more end-to-end solutions for our customers.

This transaction, when it closes, gives us 11 of the top 13 carriers. We will be powering five of the top six carriers' portals. For four of the top six carriers we power the storefront, and for four of the top six carriers we also power the search. That breadth and that coverage enable us to do the most important thing, and that is to deliver a great rich experience to the end user. 

It's all about understanding the end user better than anyone else. We are not a brand. We are the brand behind the brand. The better we can understand that end user's behavior, the better we can deliver to them on that small screen, exactly what they want. With the terabytes of data that is flowing through our data centers, 10-plus billion user impressions, hundreds of millions of search inquiries--there is no other company in aggregate that has that information from a mobile data perspective. Now we have to harness that on behalf of our customers--such as AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, etc., and the media companies and deliver a rich vibrant experience.  

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