The Nielsen Company acquiring Telephia

Information and media firm The Nielsen Company announced an agreement to acquire syndicated telecom and mobile media consumer research organization Telephia. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed--both Telephia and Nielsen are privately held companies.

According to Nielsen, Telephia's technology-based measurements of consumer behavior, product quality and subscriber attitudes will enhance and accelerate its existing mobile initiatives. Earlier this month, Nielsen announced the launch of Nielsen Wireless, a new service to measure mobile content consumption and its impact on established media behavior. Designed to complement Nielsen's Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement initiative, which measures television viewing across all television and video platforms, Nielsen Wireless will introduce its first product, Mobile Vector, in July 2007, culling data from the company's existing National People Meter TV sample to report on media behavior and audience demographics broken down by wireless carrier.

"As media content increasingly moves from television to the personal computer to the 'third screen' of the mobile device, it is essential that we measure all platforms," said Nielsen executive vice president Susan D. Whiting. "Combining Nielsen's worldwide strengths and measurement expertise with Telephia's cutting-edge research and measurement capabilities in the mobile content arena expands our capabilities in the vital, high-growth telecom and mobile media markets. Building on the compatible strengths of both companies enables us to provide more complete consumer insights to clients around the world."

At last week's BREW 2007 event, Telephia announced a partnership with conference host Qualcomm to launch a pair of new tools designed to track mobile content consumption and behaviors. The tools, dubbed MobileView and Applogger, are functional on all new Qualcomm chipsets that support BREW APIs, while MobileView accesses Qualcomm network diagnostic info, Applogger records consumer application and content usage patterns.

"A better understanding of what consumers are doing is required to win in the marketplace," said Telephia senior vice president of business development David Petersen. "These tools will help drive new product development and drive new revenue and business models."

For more on the Nielsen/Telephia deal:
-read this release

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