Communication Services Provider CLX Lands Mobile Messenger Mblox
May 25, 2016
By Steve Anderson
Contributing Writer
CLX Communications, based in Stockholm, Sweden, was already a fairly major name in Europe's communications service industry. Now, it's augmenting its enterprise and mobile presences with a new acquisition: the Mblox application-to-person mobile messaging provider.
Though the terms of the deal weren't actually announced, it's a safe bet that CLX paid substantially for Mblox, because of what Mblox is able to do for CLX. Mblox had an excellent position in not just the United States, but also Australia and the United Kingdom, giving CLX a newfound foothold that it could add to its own holdings in Europe. This not only opens up a new market, reports note, but it also allows CLX to better offer several services in the Internet of Things (IoT) vein. Plus, it opens up access to several new partners that should complement the CLX brand well. It also doesn't hurt that Mblox was a popular platform; it had its share of loyal customers on hand, sufficient to call on Mblox over seven billion times just in 2015 to process messages.
Mblox CEO Tom Cotney commented “This partnership with CLX forms a leader in an industry that has been slow to consolidate. The combination of the companies continues CLX’s impressive growth and I am delighted with the announcement of this deal. It gives our customers more of what we have been able to deliver over the past three years—improvements in quality, reliability and the broadest global reach in the industry. It gives our employees new opportunities and the pride of being a part of the undisputed leader in an exciting industry.”
It's a move that seems to have nothing but upside for CLX. The access to new markets, the complementary nature of the services involved, the ability to make a better push in both enterprise cloud computing and the IoT...all of these things mean likely growth for CLX. It's not guaranteed, of course, but when there are this many potential growth vectors, it takes a feat of statistical happenstance almost too ludicrous to consider here that at least one of them wouldn't work. CLX's purchase of Mblox offers an impressive diversification of opportunity and allows CLX to actively pursue several at once all under one umbrella. That's no mean feat, and one that should make CLX investors very happy.
With the unified communications market—indeed, many technology markets—in such a rapid state of flux, it's easy to see where having a diversified approach can be so useful. CLX's recent purchase of Mblox may have made just such an approach available.
Edited by Maurice Nagle
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