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The investment will be be doled out in two tranches -- $100 million this year and then the rest in 2012, according to SoftBank. SoftBank joins Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures in backing InMobi.
With the investment, the Bangalore, India-based InMobi will have more ammunition to take on Google, which bought AdMob, another mobile ad network, in 2009 for $750 million, and Apple, which bought Quattro Wireless in early 2010 for $275 million.
Despite the investment, mobile advertising is still a fairly small market. The total spend for such advertising is projected to hit $1.1 billion in the U.S. this year, according to eMarketer. That spend will hit $2.5 billion in 2014, the researcher estimates.