The fund raising was a major plank of its defence strategy against a takeover bid from Swiss rival Myriad and Synchronica said its board is now considering its previous advice to reject the offer.

Directors will meet with Myriad today, with the Intertainment decision to be a “key consideration for the Board in deciding upon what advice to provide to shareholders,” a statement said.

Synchronica bought Nokia’s operator branded messaging business in July of last year.

According to Synchronica, the agreement contained a clause that provided for any additional funds from any equity or debt financing above a threshold of US$5m to be used to pay off the outstanding deferred consideration.

 “Whilst Nokia did not say that it categorically intended to apply this clause, the Synchronica Board believe that it would not be able to take such a risk on behalf of shareholders,” its statement said.

It wanted Intertainment Media's first investment of C$1 million to be used for additional working capital and to integrate the Ortsbo language technology with Synchronica’s Mobile Gateway. 

Myriad said yesterday that fund manager Fidelity had agreed irrevocably to accept the offer in respect of its 9.04 per cent holding.

It added that its offer of 4.67 New Myriad Shares for every 100 Synchronica valued the UK firm at 14.6 pence per share and in total at approximately £23.2 million.

Mobile Messaging specialist Synchronica (LON:SYNC, CVE:SYN) has launched its Rich Communication Service (RCS) at industry trade fair, the Mobile World Congress.

The 'pay as you grow' solution is aimed at mobile operators that want to include items such as instant messaging video sharing and other multi-media without the normal heavy set-up costs of implementing it themselves.

The launch came as Myriad, which has bid for Synchronica, claimed it had persuaded the mobile messaging group’s largest shareholder to back its all-paper offer.

Myriad said fund manager Fidelity had agreed irrevocably to accept the offer in respect of its 9.04 per cent holding.

Synchronica’s board has consistently rejected Myriad’s approaches saying that its offer undervalues the company and there was a currency risk for UK shareholders in holding shares listed solely on the SIX Swiss Exchange. 

Myriad said today that its offer of 4.67 New Myriad Shares for every 100 Synchronica now values each at 14.6 pence per share and the company in total at approximately £23.2 million.

The RCS launch is the latest in a series of new products unveiled by Synchronica at the industry event.

Yesterday it launched its UChat social networking service. UChat is the group’s first geo-socialisation product.

Geo socialization lets mobile users connect, interact and coordinate with their immediate surroundings - people, places and events - while on the move.

Prior to that Synchronica launched its Unity cross-platform messaging service on Monday. Unity is the newest version of the messaging software, which was previously called Mobile Gateway.

Its uChat facility, unveiled at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona today, is the company’s first ‘geo socialization’ product.

Geo socialization lets mobile users connect, interact and coordinate with their immediate surroundings - people, places and events - while on the move.

It is cited by industry analysts Frost & Sullivan as "the next trend in social networking" in its Top 20 Mega Trends report. 

Chief technical officer Kim Hartlev said: "By adding geo socialization functionality into our Unity range of advanced messaging solutions we are giving mobile operators and device manufacturers the opportunity to offer subscribers a new and compelling social networking experience on the move. 

“This not only helps to combat the threat from emerging OTT [over the top service] players such as WhatsApp but also helps to reduce churn and increase ARPU.  

“We have a range of Geo Socialization solutions in the works, and are already seeing interest from customers throughout the world for these types of services."

In a separate announcement this morning Synchronica repeated its assertion that rival Myriad Group’s rejected 13 pence a share takeover bid was “opportunistic” and undervalued the group.

However, it admitted it was “not appropriate” to describe November’s indicative offer letter from Myriad as a “vague approach”.

Synchronica also said the board “unanimously believes” that the purchase of £49,000-worth of shares on November 30 last year by chief executive Angus Dent was “permissible” following a review with its advisors.

---Adds broker comments and share price----

Mobile messaging specialist Synchronica (LON:SYNC, CVE:SYN) has now launched Unity, its cross-platform unified messaging service that allows users to see and send all types of messages from a single view.

Officially unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona which starts today, and previously known as Synchronica Mobile Gateway, Unity works on all mobile phones, but also adds new innovations designed to make feature phones smart and Smartphones smarter, according to Synchronica.  

As at 3.20pm, Synchronica shares were up 11.76 per cent, to change hands at 14.25 pence.

It has also successfully integrated Unity with Intertainment Media's (CVE:INT, OTCQX: ITMFT) Ortsbo experiential language technology, enabling the platform to provide its users with seamless and real-time translation between currently 53 languages.

The integration was completed less than 3 weeks since Synchronica and the Toronto based technology incubator announced a joint venture and an up to C$10 million investment in Synchronica.

Powered by Ortsbo, users of Unity simply initiate a chat and then choose their preferred Ortsbo-supported language. Messages which are sent and received as part of the chat are then instantly and seamlessly translated without requiring any further user intervention.

The service is currently available to Unity's Android OS users, and will be extended to other device platforms in the future. It supports a wide range of commercial Instant Messaging services such as Yahoo! and Facebook Chat. 

Synchronica and Ortsbo will further develop each other's products, share research and development efforts, enlarge each other's business development activities and drive revenue and profitability from new projects, the company said.

Chief technical officer Kim Hartlev said: “Unified messaging simplifies the entire communications experience. Having to launch separate applications to send and receive messages is increasingly inconvenient and inefficient as users often have multiple identities and regularly message across several different platforms.  

“With Unity, Synchronica is redefining the future of mobile messaging with a compelling platform that enables users to access and send any message - text, email, IM, social - from a single place,” he added.

Broker Northland said in a note today: "By bringing together the different messaging types into a single view, Mobile Network Operators should be able differentiate themselves from so-called Over the Top (OTT) players such as WhatsApp that are impacting SMS and voice usage and revenues."