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Iobox

Logo: vnorra, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons3

Finnish mobile and web portal operator

IObox Oy was a Finnish mobile and web portal operator. Formed in 1999, the dot-com company ended up as part of Telefónica Mobile. At a sale price of $250m (€230m) in 2000, IObox represented the largest venture capital exit in Finland until the sale of MySQL AB in 2008 for $1bn (€670m).2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

Jan 1999Founded1

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IObox Oy was a Finnish mobile and web portal operator. Formed in 1999, the dot-com company ended up as part of Telefónica Mobile.2

Products and brands

IObox operated mobile and web portals, having as many as three million users. In addition the company operated branded portal sites for customers such as the Swedish communications company Telia, using software written in Java EE.

In February 2000 IObox announced Wapagotchi, a digital pet similar to the briefly popular Tamagotchi style toys. The user ("owner") would control their pet using WAP pages. If the virtual pet was neglected, or hadn't been cared for enough, the owner would receive SMS notifications, for example, stating that the pet was "hungry".

For a time from July 2000, IObox offered UK consumers a SMS-to-email gateway costing 6p per email( termed "m-Mail"), despite other companies already having offered such as service for free.

In February 2001, an announcement was made along with provider BEA Systems that their "global wireless portal" had scaled to 3.5 million users and up to 4,000 simultaneous connections. Only a third of the registered users had visited more than once, often only signing up for free credits.

From Wikipedia’s article on Iobox, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4

Timeline

  1. Jan 1999Founded Founded1

Sources

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