THE investments arm of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) has put $10 million in a mobile- platform company based in the United States to market and distribute targeted mobile and multiscreen solutions in Southeast Asia.
PLDT Capital Managing Director Winston M. Damarillo said the investment in Phunware, an integrated applications platform provider, will allow ePLDT Inc. to offer the Los Angeles-based company’s solutions that allow corporations to engage and manage relationships with their customers worldwide: anytime, anywhere, on any device.
“Filipino and Asean consumers are among the most engaged users of mobile and digital services in the world,” he said on Wednesday. “We see mobile phones as an essential part of our daily lives and expect new experiences to pique our digital curiosity.”
Damarillo said that through its pioneering multiscreen-as-a-service (MaaS) platform, Phunware gives companies everything they need to engage seamlessly with their customers through mobile devices, from indoor and outdoor location-based marketing and advertising to content management, notifications and analytics, to indoor mapping, navigation and wayfinding.
“The partnership of the PLDT Group and Phunware will also enable our corporate and SME clients to address the growing needs and appetites of their digital consumers,” he added.
Phunware currently supports more than 500 million monthly unique users globally on its multiscreen cloud platform, including branded application portfolios and infrastructure for hundreds of enterprise customers across more than 40 billion indoor and outdoor user events.
The American company serves top-tier customers in the US, including CBS Interactive, NBC Sports, Dignity Health, GameStop, Mandarin Oriental and WWE among many others.
“With more than 70 million subscribers, PLDT instantly provides a large base of audiences and communities that will enjoy new and unprecedented levels of real-time engagement both indoors and outdoors across their favorite brands and venues. At the same time, we look forward to expanding PLDT’s product portfolio,” Phunware Chairman and CEO Alan S. Knitowski said.
For his part, ePLDT CEO Ernesto R. Alberto said the joint venture will provide an edge for companies that do business in retail, travel, hospitality and real estate.
“ePLDT is constantly seeking ways to provide strategic digital advantages for our customers,” he said. “Phunware’s market-ready solutions—together with our other digital solution sets in the domains of Data Center, Cloud and Big Data—will enable ePLDT to accelerate the ongoing digital transformation of large enterprises and small and medium-sized businesses.”
The joint venture’s services are slated to be launched within the next 90 days. The partnership is the first of the many initiatives that the newly minted investment arm will undertake this year.
For 2015 alone, it has a programmed capital of $50 million.
Intense competition in the digital space has forced the dominant telecommunications provider to revise its capital requirements this year to P43 billion.
Bulk of the amount will be used for the company’s digital initiatives. Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services forecast that the locally listed firm will likely spend up to P20 billion in a matter of two years to acquire more Internet players.
Earlier, PLDT Chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan said his company is planning to acquire at least 10 Internet companies in the next few years.
The Filipino company, one of the most valuable stocks in the local bourse, has invested significant amounts in companies such as Rocket Internet — the company behind Lazada, Zalora, and Food Panda— and Malaysian Internet television provider iflix. It also has interests in PayMaya.