Certainly everyone is aware that the Spanish TPI (“Paginas Amarillas”—Spanish Yellow Pages) has been up for sale. Bidding came down to two major players, the British Yell telephone directories and Apax Partners and Cinven, a venture capital. On the 28th of April, Telefonica agreed to sell its 59.9% in TPI to Yell for 1.839 million euros. This is definitely big news. Since 2001, when Yell split from the British Telecom, it invested in a number of European and U.S. companies, leading to 135 million in profits. TPI, on the other hand, is a major player in local knowledge. Not only is it the primary phone directory, but it comes with a number of add-ons and extras. Just recently, TPI launched its own local search engine, Noxtrum, which aims to take a bite out of the Spanish search pie. Noxtrum’s search results are powered by Ask.es.
Moreover, TPI’s Paginas Amarillas powers a number of Spanish search engines, for local results. The MSN portal has a yellow pages option, Yahoo also relies on Paginas Amarillas, and even more interestingly, the day TPI’s sale was confirmed, so was an agreement between TPI and Google Spain (read more in the following post) in the new Google Maps launched in Spain.
Turning over TPI to Britain’s primary Yellow Pages is likely to lead to at least some strategic changes. How will Yell take advantage of TPI’s local power in Spain, as well as Latin America?
It’s certainly something to keep an eye on.
Sources:
Marina Zaliznyak
Latest posts by Marina Zaliznyak (see all)
- Google to Acquire Spanish owned and started Panoramio - June 3, 2007
- Ask.com behind the Anti-Google campaign - March 18, 2007
- Ya.com reveals their own video and photo sharing services—YaTV and YaShoot - March 18, 2007
Many thanks Marina, please have a great vacation, look forward to any thoughts/observations you may have on your return:-)
WWT,
it’s an interesting question. I’ll be sure to contact some people in TPI to see what they think for you.
I’m currently on vacation, so give me a couple of weeks. 😉
How does this/will this affect telecommunications in Spain for both residents and tourists? Any further information or suggestions would be welcome as I run a travel blog with a large Spain sectionprimarily for UK expats and this sort of information is ideal. Thanks
Interesting news.
Yellow Pages and TPI are very stron in South America and in the spanish speaking market in general. In Chile for example, they were virtually a monopoly until two years ago, when a the local newspaper launched their own printed directory.
It is curious however to see that most of this competition is still on the “Printed” ground.
For TPI Chile that’s another takeover in less than five years. In the first place they were bough by Telefonica Spain, and now British Yell.
It mus be quite difficult to keep a consistent strategy will all those changes. And now with competition going up, it could be worse.
But it helps to have fresh cash from the new owners…