Sequoia Ups The Mobile Anti With $10Mil For MoboTap
Maker Of Dolphin funded by Sequoia
With a seemingly endless supply of liquidity, especially for Internet and mobile start-ups, an incredibly active Sequoia Capital is at it again. The top tier venture capital firm has just plunked down $10 million in Series A financing on mobile web start-up MoboTap.
Despite being highly active in the Internet and mobile spaces, this is Sequoia’s first investment in a browser. Matrix Partners also contributed to the round.
MoboTap is the maker of the mobile Dolphin Browser which it launched strictly on the Android platform in March of 2010. In just more than 5 quarters since the first release, Dolphin has acquired more than 8 million users.
The size of the sector and the money hanging in the balance is no joke, as in 2010 (for the first time) sales of smartphones exceeded that of personal computers on a worldwide basifor the first times . That marks a 75% increase in mobile devices in just 2010 over 2009. Overall there were just over 300 million such devices sold in 2010 alone.
MoboTaps Dolphin browser is said to be so widespread because of its intuitive nature and ease of use on small screens. The company intends to use the current funding to further develop the Dolphin product and to put it in front of a more worldwide audience, especially China where the opportunity for growth is huge.
