MobileCrunch |  |
- HTC Buys Mobile Web Services Company Dashwire For Up To $18.5 Million
- Texas Instruments Promises All-Day Battery Life With 2013 OMAPs
- DSLR Controller App Lets Your Android Device Call The Shots
- Microsoft Responds To Google’s Response To Microsoft’s Response
- Apple Takes Lead In Smartphone Shipments, But Samsung Is On Its Heels
- Google Responds To Microsoft’s “Gotcha”: They’re Diverting Attention With A Trick That Failed
- Yet Another Questionable iPhone 5 “Spy Shot” Pops Up
- comScore: Android Keeps Gobbling Up Smartphone Share, Now 40 Percent
- Ngmoco And AT&T Partner To Bring Social Gaming Platform Mobage To Android Users
- AppGrooves: App Recommendation Engine Combines Social With “Hot Or Not” Feature
- AT&T To Shove Jailbroken Hotspots Users On To Tiered Data Plan
- GLMPS Launches A Cool New Photo Sharing App With A Video Twist
- Kinvey Closes $2M Seed Round For Its “Backend As A Service” Product
- T-Mobile Customers Continue To Jump Ship, But With Less Haste Than Before
- Augme Technologies To Acquire Mobile Ad Firm Hipcricket For $44.5 Million
- Why Did Google Blog About Patents Today? Because The Nortel Loss Was Just The Beginning.
| HTC Buys Mobile Web Services Company Dashwire For Up To $18.5 Million Posted: 05 Aug 2011 04:20 AM PDT  Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC this morning announced that it has agreed to acquire, through its HTC America Holding unit, 100% of Seattle-based mobile-web connected services company Dashwire for a maximum purchase price of $18.5 million to boost its HTCSense.com mobile cloud services offering. Dashwire offers a range of consumer, social and device management software services for mobile operators, device makers and retailers. The company’s platform is available for Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry. On its website, Dashwire says it is backed by investors who ‘built the wireless and technology industries’ at McCaw Cellular, Western Wireless, Voicestream, Nextel, China Unicom, and Microsoft. Another investor is Best Buy Capital, the retail giant’s investment arm. At the end of last year, Dashwire raised $1 million in debt financing. The company was founded by CEO Ford Davidson, a former Product Manager in the Mobile Devices group at Microsoft. Dashwire’s CTO, James Prudente, helped build critical elements of Amazon's web operation in its early days, and also helped create the Amazon Mobile group. Related: Smartphone Maker HTC Buys S3 Graphics From VIA, WTI For $300 Million HTC Invests In Multimedia Delivery Platform Company Saffron Digital
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| Texas Instruments Promises All-Day Battery Life With 2013 OMAPs Posted: 04 Aug 2011 05:42 PM PDT  Since battery technology isn’t really enabling us to pack more than a few watt-hours into our portable devices, companies like Intel, Nvidia, and Texas Instruments are working hard at making their chips and processors more efficient. Apple is acknowledged to be the leader here — their vertically-integrated device creation process (and the mysterious A5) gives them the control they need to maximize battery and get that critical 10-hour claim. TI is hoping that an upcoming family of its OMAP chips will take some of the pressure off manufacturers and enable current batteries to last from dawn till dusk. Speaking with Fudzilla, TI’s Brian Carlson mentioned that the 2013 OMAPs will use a 20nm process and should enable “true all day computing.” What does that mean, exactly, when the most popular device is sporting a 10-hour battery? That’s all day in most people’s books, even with plenty of video usage. Carlson didn’t put a number on it, but it’s clear that TI wants to focus on efficiency and not power. Nvidia, on the other hand, is in an arms race with Intel (an ARM race if you will) to push the power of its mobile processors as high as possible. The question is: what will the tablet and mobile world look like in 2013? Probably not radically different, but an all-day battery might not be much of a draw by then. At any rate the improvement of memory and cache handling and other performance tweaks is always welcome. As Tom’s Hardware points out, there were indications of TI’s intent to sell off the OMAP brand after the release of OMAP 5 in 2012. A nice bidding war between Nvidia and Intel would bring in a hell of a payday. Discussing plans for a 2013 release, however, seems to moot speculation on that point; maybe TI felt they were better off playing the game than cashing out.
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| DSLR Controller App Lets Your Android Device Call The Shots Posted: 04 Aug 2011 03:20 PM PDT  Using your phone as a remote for your DSLR isn't exactly the newest idea out there — a ton exist for iOS — but Android historically hasn't seen that same kind of love. There have been attempts to make it work, some better than others, but a common theme among them is that you weren't able to run the device directly into your camera. Rather, your DSLR gets plugged into your computer or a physical adapter, and thanks to a bit of software your phone takes control from there. A bit cumbersome, no? A plucky developer on XDA named Chainfire changed that today. A beta version of his DSLR Controller app has just hit the Marketplace, and on top of supporting a direct connection to your camera, it also looks gorgeous. The only extras involved are a USB host cable (a.k.a an On-The-Go cable) and the willingness to fork over $8.51. The app provides a live-view display that runs at around 15 fps, which is a little on the low side, but respectable considering what we’re working with. It also give the use full control over white balance, aperture, exposure compensation, ISO speed, metering, and a bevy of other things you'll only really appreciate if you're a photo buff. Now, before you whip out your cameras and your credit cards, compatibility is a bit limited at this early stage. It only works with Android devices that have USB host capability (the dev recommends the Galaxy S II or a Honeycomb tablet) and Canon DSLRs. Again, it's still in beta, so those of you who have the right arsenal in the first place may experience a few hiccups, but after a bit of polish (and more camera compatibility down the line), we could be looking at the app to beat.
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| Microsoft Responds To Google’s Response To Microsoft’s Response Posted: 04 Aug 2011 03:14 PM PDT  If you thought that Microsoft and Google, two massive public companies, would quickly and quietly retire behind the scenes to continue their fight after their very public back-and-forth over the past couple of days, you’d be wrong. Well, maybe they are fighting behind the scenes too, but the pissing match continues in public as well. Good for us! In the interest of covering both sides of the story (and certainly not because this storyline is full of great fodder, generating massive interest — and pageviews), here’s the latest retort from Microsoft. Once again, Microsoft’s head of communications, Frank Shaw, is firing back at Google’s head legal guy, David Drummond, for his most recent update to his blog post from yesterday. And Shaw is doing it again on Twitter. For those who have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, a refresher:
Shaw’s most interesting Tweet in response reads as follows:
That’s Shaw asserting that Google held out of a Novell patent partnership bid so they could find other patents to assert against others. Google’s stance on the patent matter has always been that they only want them for defensive purposes, so you know this jab must really piss them off. Hopefully that means another response! Until then, here are Shaw’s Tweets: Follow @fxshaw@fxshaw Frank X. Shaw Hello again David Drummond. This is going to take a few tweets, so here we go. Let’s look at what Google does not dispute in their reply. Follow @fxshaw@fxshaw Frank X. Shaw We offered Google the opportunity to bid with us to buy the Novell patents; they said no. Follow @fxshaw@fxshaw Frank X. Shaw Why? BECAUSE they wanted to buy something that they could use to assert against someone else. Follow @fxshaw@fxshaw Frank X. Shaw SO partnering with others & reducing patent liability across industry is not something they wanted to help do And if you’re really interested, more on this topic:
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| Apple Takes Lead In Smartphone Shipments, But Samsung Is On Its Heels Posted: 04 Aug 2011 02:27 PM PDT  According to a report from IDC, Apple shipped more smartphones than any other manufacturer in Q2, stealing bragging rights from a struggling Nokia. With 20.3 million units shipped, Apple managed to nab a 19.1 percent market share, representing year-over-year growth of 141.7 percent. Samsung and Nokia followed behind, with RIM and HTC bringing up the rear. It's worth noting that HTC posted record numbers this quarter with 166 percent YOY growth to claim an 11.7 percent market share, up from 8.9 percent last quarter. The HTC Sensation and Evo 3D had quite a bit to do with that, along with HTC's increasing prominence in China. Even though the company ranks fifth, it still seemed to eat a large portion of RIM and Nokia's share. But HTC wasn't alone in that — Samsung took a big bite, too. In fact, Samsung's had an amazing year, seeing year-over-year growth of 380.6 percent. Much of that success can be attributed to the Samsung Galaxy S II, which sold 3 million units in its first 55 days on the market. If they can maintain anything like that growth for a little longer, they’ll leapfrog Apple with ease. Now for the bad news. RIM shipped a little over one million more smartphones this quarter than it did in the same quarter of 2010 — which would be a respectable bump if the smartphone market itself hadn’t seen far greater growth, hitting 106.5 million shipments overall this quarter. So while RIM did ship more handsets, they actually lost a ton of market share. Now for the really bad news. Nokia, as expected, performed worse this quarter compared to last year both in units sold and market share. After a 30 percent drop in units shipped, Nokia now controls just 15.7 percent of the market. Obviously, the transition from MeeGo to Windows Phone 7 has quite a bit to do with this. While MeeGo dies, customers are opting for brand new phones rather than waiting for a Windows-powered Nokia handset. What’s worse, the wait isn’t ending anytime soon, as the U.S. isn’t anywhere on Nokia’s list of countries to get the first Windows-powered handset. Apple and Android eating Nokia and RIM’s lunch isn’t exactly breaking news, but seeing the actual numbers is always interesting. According to comScore’s latest numbers, Android has taken a 40 percent market share as of June. It just so happens that the manufacturers seeing the greatest growth — HTC and Samsung — also happen to predominantly run Android. It only follows that if Android can continue to grow at the rate it is, Samsung and HTC will follow suit.
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| Google Responds To Microsoft’s “Gotcha”: They’re Diverting Attention With A Trick That Failed Posted: 04 Aug 2011 12:52 PM PDT  This back and forth between Google and Microsoft is getting good. Yesterday, Google wrote a post calling out Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, and others for using “bogus” patents to try to kill Android. Some of the patents Google’s Chief Legal Officer David Drummond mentioned included the ones Microsoft acquired from Novell (not to be confused with Nortel, which happened later). When Microsoft saw this, two senior officials took to Twitter to effectively pants Google. You see, Microsoft had tried to get Google to partner with them to buy the Novell patents — Google turned them down. And Microsoft had the email to prove it. But there was an obvious reason for this rejection, which Microsoft conveniently left out, Google now says. Drummond has addressed the pantsing incident in an update to his original blog post from yesterday. He kicks the update off with:
But then comes the substance:
So what Drummond is saying is that Microsoft’s offer to team up with Google to buy the Novell patents was more or less a trick. By teaming up on the Novell patents, Google would have them, but they wouldn’t have been able to have been used to protect Android, because Microsoft would have had them too. Should Google have just gone along with that anyway, since ultimately Microsoft did get them (along with Apple, Oracle, and EMC)? You could argue that. But fortunately for Google, the courts intervened in that deal and made Microsoft sell off the patents they bought and made the others in the group license the rest, Drummond notes. This may go a bit deeper too. It’s conceivable that Microsoft knew Google would never go for this joint-acquisition plan, but offered it anyway so that when the DoJ did look into the deal, Microsoft would point to the offer sent Google’s way. These companies are very smart and calculating, don’t put something like this past either of them. In his original post, Drummond said that the DoJ was also looking into the more recent Nortel patent acquisition by Microsoft, Apple, RIM, and others. Clearly, Google hopes the same type of thing will happen here, but that’s still being decided. While Apple was cleared by the DoJ to buy the patents ahead of the auction, Microsoft could face a similar ruling as the Novell situation since they already had a licensing agreement on the patents, just as they had on the Novell patents before they tried to buy them. We’ll see. More importantly, this battle is not going to end anytime soon. Novell was part one, then things intensified significantly with the Nortel auction, part 2. But part 3 should be the most intense yet, as both Google and Apple are going after the InterDigital patents. The Nortel patent purse had over 6,000 patents, but InterDigital has over 8,800. If the winning bid on Nortel was $4.5 billion, InterDigital should be well north of $5 billion. Hang on to your butts. Update: Microsoft Responds To Google's Response To Microsoft's Response
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| Yet Another Questionable iPhone 5 “Spy Shot” Pops Up Posted: 04 Aug 2011 12:36 PM PDT  We’ve seen a Bigfoot-esque iPhone 5. We’ve seen a totally fake (but supposedly based on the real deal) iPhone 5. Now, meet: the oddly angled, questionably skewed iPhone 5. This shot comes from MacRumors forum-goer guigsh, and has been blasting off around the blogs all morning. Guigsh claims that he had hands-on with the device for “only 2 minutes” with “pictures forbidden”, all taking place “in the office of a French operator.” Now, on the upside: this shot fits well enough with some of the rumors we’ve been hearing for so long: Slimmer? Yep. Smaller bezel around the display? Sure. But what about the tapered back? Or the more pronounced rounded edges? Ehhhh — slightly so, but that could be side effect of stretching/distorting in Photoshop. Speaking of which, I’m pretty sure that’s whats going on here. Stare at the image for a minute or two, and stuff just starts to seem.. off. Then you start to notice it: why is his index finger so long? Why is the ear piece hole gaping like that? Why the heck is he holding it like that? The longer you look at it, the more it looks like a stretched out iPhone 4 being held in such a way to minimize obvious stretching of the fingers. Forum hero roow110 set out to recreate the shot with his iPhone 4 and a dash of Photoshop distortion. Here is his “literally 30 second Photoshop job” (Note for clarity: The photo below is a confirmed fake attempting to recreate the shot above so as to debunk it): Looks like this is myth is busted to me. What do you think? (Update: Myth double-busted! Giz found that this image was floating around a full day before Guigsh posted it as his own, and was originally captioned (in French) with “A picture like this could drive some sites crazy…”)
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| comScore: Android Keeps Gobbling Up Smartphone Share, Now 40 Percent Posted: 04 Aug 2011 11:45 AM PDT  When it comes to smartphones in the U.S., Android and Apple keep growing at the expense of other mobile platforms like RIM, Windows Phone, and Nokia’s Symbian. The latest mobile subscriber numbers are out from comScore. Android leads the pack with 40 percent market share of U.S. smartphone subscribers as of June, 2011, up 5.4 percent from March, 2011. Android is also widening the gap compared to Apple, which ended the period with 26.6 percent share. But Apple did grow 1.1 percent from March, whereas RIM (23.4 percent), Microsoft (5.8 percent), and Symbian (2.0 percent) all lost share. Apple’s share did not budge compared to May, 2011, but Android gained 2 points in share in just one month. It definitely is showing momentum, according to this set of data. Expect to see this trend continue until a new iPhone comes out, perhaps in September. Raise your hands if you are waiting for it to come out before you buy your next phone.
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| Ngmoco And AT&T Partner To Bring Social Gaming Platform Mobage To Android Users Posted: 04 Aug 2011 11:03 AM PDT  AT&T and mobile social games company ngmoco, which is owned by Japanese gaming giant DeNA, have just announced a pretty significant agreement to bring the Mobage social gaming platform to AT&T Android customers. According to a release, Mobage will serve as a hub for AT&T Android users to discover and play games, as well as connect and communicate with other players worldwide. AT&T says the agreement is the first of its kind between ngmoco and a U.S. wireless carrier. AT&T customers will be able to find the Mobage app conveniently on Android Market where they can easily access the full catalog of Mobage titles as well as connect with the entire Mobage mobile social gaming community. Tokyo-based DeNA, which makes $1.3 billion a year, acquired ngmoco for $400 million last year. Mobage launched worldwide last week platform is a stand-alone social network with a focus on mobile gaming and includes its own virtual currency MobaCoin. The platform offers most games for free and monetizes via the sales of virtual items. As my colleague Serkan Toto wrote last week, Mobage in English is initially targeted at Android users in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Eventually Ngmoco plans to roll out Mobage to iOS users. AT&T has also partnered with Zynga to provide customized games and content to the carrier's customers.
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| AppGrooves: App Recommendation Engine Combines Social With “Hot Or Not” Feature Posted: 04 Aug 2011 10:37 AM PDT  The more mobile apps come out, the bigger the discovery problem gets for users: Apple, for example, recently announced they have 425,000 apps in the App Store. Rankings, recommendations from platform providers or search often bring unsatisfying results – a pain that an app called AppGrooves [version 2.0, free on iTunes] now tries to solve. There are quite a few recommendation engines out there already (i.e. Chomp or Frenzapp), but AppGrooves goes in a different direction: the idea is to combine a proprietary recommendation algorithm with a “Hot or not”-feature and a social element to discover unknown cool iOS apps. The way it works is that AppGrooves first detects what kind of apps you have installed on your device. In order to find new ones that fit your taste, AppGrooves then lets you choose between various pairs of apps it pulls from the list of apps you have on your device in “Hot Or Not” style (i.e. “Which do you like better: Pandora or Spotify?”). What’s interesting is that AppGrooves allows you to let your Facebook friends vote on apps as well: after voting on a pair of apps, you can not only share your decision but ask your Facebook friends which app they would have chosen for in that specific case, too. AppGrooves also collects votes from all your friends using the app and accumulates these social votes in order to produce more personalized recommendations over time (you can access this social hit list from within AppGrooves anytime). And if social isn’t your thing, you can also use the app’s search function to find apps with similar descriptions, from similar users etc. AppGrooves is one of the companies of the 500 Startups summer 2011 accelerator program. Its co-founder (and Japanese national) Dr. Naoki Shibata has stepped down from positions at Tokyo University, Stanford University and Japan’s biggest e-commerce company Rakuten to relocate to Silicon Valley. Shibata’s goal was to make his company global from day one, and his plan is apparently working: AppGrooves has just closed $360,000 in an angel round from some big names in the US and Japan, including 500 Startups, Richard Chen (founding partner of AngelPad), Mochio Umeda (president of MUSE Associates), Takao Ozawa and Gen Miyazawa (two Japan-based angel investors).
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| AT&T To Shove Jailbroken Hotspots Users On To Tiered Data Plan Posted: 04 Aug 2011 09:52 AM PDT  It looks like AT&T has decided to take the kid gloves off when it comes to their problem unauthorized hotspot users. Many of the users who get the most mileage out of jailbreak-only apps like MyWi are still rocking AT&T's grandfathered unlimited data plan, but that won't be the case going forward. Rather than just sending out thinly-veiled notices by text message to offending users, they've decided to simply kick those customers off the unlimited plan and onto the appropriate tiered plan. We're waiting for the official word from AT&T, but according to 9to5Mac, all those who received an email or text notification alluding to their unkosher data use will be forcibly removed from the unlimited plan if they tether again after a certain time. AT&T's tethering plan, if you're not familiar, runs $45/month and nets you 4GB of usage. Not too shabby, but certainly a far cry from the promise of all-you-can-eat data that some users were keen to take advantage of. Update #1: I had originally reported that August 11 would be the cut off date, but this does not appear to be the case for all affected customers. Update #2: AT&T has just responded with their official stance on the situation: they have been reaching out to affected customers for quite some time, so if you’ve been contacted before, you should probably already know what your deadline looks like. Furthermore, AT&T offers these three choices for those having to make their decisions soon:
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| GLMPS Launches A Cool New Photo Sharing App With A Video Twist Posted: 04 Aug 2011 09:18 AM PDT  There are a few photo sharing apps out there on the market today, as you may have noticed. In fact, there are enough choices that TechCrunch’s own Alexia Tsostsis and former Myspace marketing guy Sean Percival created a flowchart to help you find you way to the right app. It’s a space that, while popular, is in desperate need of some fresh ideas. So, starting today, there’s yet another photo sharing app on the App Store, but this one has a pretty cool twist. Founded in 2010, San Francisco-based GLMPS is a bootstrapped startup that is today releasing its eponymous iPhone app, which offers an experience the startup likens to a “visual status update”. What does that mean, exactly? Well, put simply: GLMPS blends video with traditional image capturing, so that the 5 seconds or so before one snaps a photo is captured by the app in quick, abbreviated video form. Essentially, this is akin to “pressing play on your photos”, so that when you view a still image, a small thumbnail appears in the lower right hand portion of the screen, showing the moments leading up to capture in video — or suped-up .gif — form. Once a user captures their photo, the photo-video loads in their iPhone photo library and then, like other photo sharing applications, they can easily share those glmpses via Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, email, SMS, and so on. For today’s launch, GLMPS has partnered with Foursquare, among others, to add a further enriching photo-video layer to the check-in experience. It’s a great idea, and one of those simple ones that, once you see it in action, it becomes hard to believe that it hasn’t been done before. Adding those few spontaneous moments before a photo is taken in video form, briefly taking one back in time, is a nifty feature. It doesn’t quite feel done yet, but there’s plenty of potential. Just ask Scoble. GLMPS is currently free on the iPhone, and Android apps (and beyond) are headed down the pipeline in the near future. The GLMPS team, which includes Paul Robinett, Nick Long, and Esther Crawford, will also soon be adding the ability to stitch together “glmpses” to create highlight reels of a user’s photo-video library from the perspective of the individual, or groups, based on time, tags, and location. “We saw GLMPS earlier this year and it was a no-brainer to integrate with the foursquare platform”, said Foursquare VP of Mobile & Strategic Partnerships Holger Luedorf. “GLMPS enriches the check-in experience by providing a quick, rich snapshot of the moment. It’s our goal to give our millions of users and our brand partners the ultimate engagement experience, and GLMPS is a powerful tool for everyone in the foursquare ecosystem”. For more info and to start glmpsing your life today, please visit http://www.glmps.com.
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| Kinvey Closes $2M Seed Round For Its “Backend As A Service” Product Posted: 04 Aug 2011 09:10 AM PDT  Most developers would agree: building backends is no fun. It’s like setting out to build the game of your dreams, then having to spend 2 months on the rendering engine — by the time you’re done building the things that most folks wouldn’t even realize is there, you don’t have the energy to build the fun stuff. Kinvey, a TechStars Boston 2011 startup, has just closed a $2M round for their “Backend As A Service” product, which aims to let mobile developers skip past all the boring database-building and get right into that fun stuff. How Kinvey Works: or, in a less Infrography way:
Kinvey’s been pretty successful in finding developers — more so than they intended, even. Their goal for their first month post-launch was to have around 30 developers on the service; instead, they had 150. Today, they’ve got around 500 developers building on the product. Kinvey is totally free to developers during Beta, which should last until the product officially launches sometime in Fall of this year. Alas, their exact pricing model is yet to be determined. This $2M round was lead by Atlas Venture, with backing by Avalon Ventures. Kinvey says the money will primarily go towards growing their team, along with building out features like additional third-party data services and app analytics.
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| T-Mobile Customers Continue To Jump Ship, But With Less Haste Than Before Posted: 04 Aug 2011 06:48 AM PDT  T-Mobile's customer base has been dwindling for a while now, but the migration from pink seems to be slowing with just 50,000 customers bouncing out of there in the second quarter. That's compared to the 90,000 T-Mo customers that jumped ship last year. With this past quarter's losses, T-Mobile's current subscriber base comprises 33.6 million people — quite a bit less than AT&T's 90+ million subscribers. That's ok though. AT&T's $39 billion check is going towards wireless spectrum, not new customers. Then again, a boost in pre-paid customers couldn't hurt, which is exactly the demographic that T-Mobile seems to attract. After losing its deal with Radio Shack, T-Mobile has signed a new agreement with 7-Eleven to sell pre-paid phones in its convenient stores. As far as contract customers go, T-Mobile saw a dip from just over 26 million subscribers at the end of March to 25.8 million by June 30. On the other hand, T-Mo’s prepaid customer base increased from 7.6 million to 7.8 million during the same period. T-Mo's parent company, Duetsche Telekom, doesn't seem to pleased about little pink's performance, mentioning that "the contract-customer situation remains unsatisfactory" in its earnings release.
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| Augme Technologies To Acquire Mobile Ad Firm Hipcricket For $44.5 Million Posted: 04 Aug 2011 05:30 AM PDT  Mobile marketing service, Augme Technologies, today announced that it will be acquiring Hipcricket, a mobile marketing and advertising platform for $44.5 million — $6 million of which is in cash and $38.5 million in common stock. Hipcricket’s shareholders must approve the acquisition before it can be finalized, yet with the transaction also calling for a 12-month earn-out payment of an additional $27.5 million, it seems likely that the deal will be approved. Augme will take on all of Hipcricket’s 50-plus employees, but the mobile ad firm will continue to operate out of its offices in Kirkland, Washington. We profiled Augme in June as an under-the-radar company on the rise in the mobile advertising space, when it released the latest version of its Ad Life platform. As we wrote at the time, “Ad Life, allows marketers, brands, and agencies to plan, create, test, deploy, and track mobile marketing programs — with the most noteworthy feature of Augme's patented technology being the fact that it is able to reach targeted groups while remaining device-agnostic”. Augme’s acquisition of Hipcricket follows hot on the heels of its acquisition of Jagtag for $5.5 million two weeks ago. As Jagtag specializes in bar codes and QR codes, and Hipcricket offers marketing solutions that touch on SMS, MMS, mobile websites, advertising networks, and branded applications, Augme is clearly firing on all cylinders in an attempt to round out its platform. "We expect the complementary resources of Augme, JAGTAG and Hipcricket, when combined, will allow Augme to provide the most powerful best-of-breed mobile marketing solutions to global brand name leaders, backed by strong intellectual property portfolio, including patented technology and software-as-a-service, ("SaaS") technology platforms", Augme CEO Paul Arena said. Augme has traded publicly on Over the Counter Bulletin Board since 2002. The company’s total revenue in 2011 was $2.8 million, but Augme management told me last month that it expects revenue to push $16 million in fiscal 2012 and will achieve positive cash flow the next year. Poised as the company is in a hot growth sector (Gartner expects mobile ad revenue to hit $3.3 billion by the end of 2011, more than double revenue in 2010 — and to hockey-stick to $20.6 billion by 2015), it wouldn’t be surprising to see the company continue to acquire attractive mobile solutions, adding pieces to its puzzle as it makes a play at becoming a leader in the mobile marketing space.
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| Why Did Google Blog About Patents Today? Because The Nortel Loss Was Just The Beginning. Posted: 04 Aug 2011 12:10 AM PDT  As you’ve undoubtedly seen by now, Google decided to go on the offensive today with regard to patents. No, they didn’t go after any company for violating their patents. Nor did they spend billions acquiring new ones. Instead, David Drummond, Google’s SVP and Chief Legal Officer, took to the Google Blog to lash out at Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, and others for using “bogus patents” to attack their Android mobile platform. But why now? In the past, Google has remained fairly mum on the topic. And they certainly weren’t calling out rivals by name. They’ve talked generally about the broken patent system, and even did a post explaining why they were willing to spend big money on the Nortel patents — for defensive purposes. But those approaches haven’t worked. Google is now arguably more vulnerable than they’ve ever been. And the stakes are about to go even higher. When Google lost the Nortel bidding, they’re believed to have bid north of $4 billion before dropping out. Apple, backing Rockstar Bidco, eventually won with a bid of $4.5 billion. Now a battle for an even bigger treasure of patents looms. Both Apple and Google have been looking into making bids to acquire InterDigital, according to multiple reports. Samsung is also now looking to get into the action as well, Bloomberg reports today. You can bet Microsoft is sniffing around as well. Whereas the Nortel win granted Apple, Micrsoft, RIM, and the other consortium partners access to over 6,000 mobile patents, InterDigital holds around 8,800 patents in the same space. In other words, this latest battle is going to be insane. We’re looking at $5 billion easy, and likely even higher, based on the Nortel deal. Google is clearly willing to pay to acquire patents, but they’ve reiterated time and time again that they won’t overpay for them. “This anti-competitive strategy is also escalating the cost of patents way beyond what they're really worth. Microsoft and Apple's winning $4.5 billion for Nortel's patent portfolio was nearly five times larger than the pre-auction estimate of $1 billion,” Dummond wrote today. Of course, Drummond failed to mention Google’s own $4 billion+ bid on those same patents. It just happened to be a losing one. (He failed to mention something else too.) The $4 billion+ bid was likely well out of Google’s comfort zone, but they knew they had to win. Well, at least until they realized they likely couldn’t win against Apple, Microsoft, etc. The same is likely to be true here. And Google knows it. They have nearly $40 billion in cash and cash equivalents to spend. But Apple has almost double that. And if Apple teams up with Microsoft again, they’ll have over $100 billion in buying power. At the end of the day, Google will not be able to out-bid Apple, and they’re running out of options. Google’s official line is that there are plenty of patent opportunities out there. And the truth is that there are a lot — look at the deal they reportedly just did with IBM, for example. But that deal was for only 1,000 or so patents. This effectively doubled Google’s arsenal. But they’re still nowhere near Apple’s 10,000+ patents after the Nortel deal. And Microsoft should be well over 20,000 now. If Apple or Microsoft get another 8,800+ from InterDigital… It’s massive deals like these that Google needs to be going after. And there aren’t too many of them. Google’s only play is try to acquire enough patents to work towards a mutual assured destruction agreement with their rivals. But again, that’s going to be hard given who they’re going up against. This leaves three options: 1) appeal to the courts. 2) appeal to the public for support. 3) pray. Today’s blog post was Google moving on to option 2. Option 3 may be just around the corner… [photo: flickr/c jill reed]
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