Slowly but surely, an Israeli online gaming startup is turning into a world giant in its field. Oberon Media, which specializes in casual games, is buying the international company I-Play.

Though the companies did not release the scope of transaction and refused to discuss it, TheMarker has learned that the Israeli buyer is paying more than $100 million.

"The current acquisition will enable us to offer Oberon Media games on any screen the player chooses - online, on TV or cellular," Leidner told TheMarker.

I-Play is a world leader in cellular gaming applications. To finance the acquisition, Oberon resorted to raising money from existing shareholders and new ones. Its existing shareholders include Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Oak Investment Partners, among others. They were joined in the last financing round by Lehman Brothers.

The target audience for cellular games is estimated to be a billion people, through cellular providers including Verizon, AT&T and Vodafone. I-Play maintains offices in London, Scotland and California, development centers in Britain and Romania, and sales offices in France, German, Spain, the U.S. and Singapore.

This is Oberon's third acquisition. The first two cost it much less. The last was in November 2006, when it bought Blaze of the U.S., which develops and distributes games for cellular applications.

Then too the companies didn't publicize the size of the deal, but industry sources believe it was a few million dollars.

Oberon's first acquisition was at the end of 2005, when it bought C-Mate, an Israeli company working on a platform to create multi-participant cellular games.

Oberon was founded in 2003 by three Israelis - Ofer Leidner, 36, Tomer Ben-Kiki, 37, and Tal Kerret, 37, with the help of Zohar Gilon of Tamar Ventures, who was the first investor and who is today a very active director. The company has 500 employees and maintains offices in New York, Seattle, London, Singapore and South Korea. It also has several development centers, the main one being in Tel Aviv's Ramat Hahayal, which has dozens of employees.

During the year 2006, more than 420 million surfers visited games based on Oberon systems. Microsoft has even embedded games that Oberon developed in its new operating system, Vista.