Recently in Mergers and Acquistions Category

AdMob has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google for approximately $700 million. AdMob is a popular mobile advertising platform that also tracks usage and other analytic factors.

"The best part of all this is what's next. We are not going away. After our deal with Google closes, we will work together to accelerate the pace of innovation in this area. Our product and engineering teams will keep building great products for all of our customers. Our business development team will keep working to maximize ad revenue for the more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications that make up AdMob's publisher network. Our sales teams will keep working with our thousands advertisers to deliver successful campaigns and our marketing group will keep pushing to get the word out about mobile. It's just that now we will be able to do an even better job for all of our customers," CEO Omar Hamoui.

Digby, the leading provider of mobile commerce solutions for retailers, announced the acquisition of Movaya Wireless, Inc., a Seattle, Washington-based mobile software company focused on building digital goods storefront applications for the iPhone, Android and mobile web platforms.

Additionally, Movaya Chengdu Technology, Ltd., Movaya's Asian operations center, will form the basis for Digby Chengdu Technology, Ltd. Digby Chengdu will serve as Digby's hub for the rapidly expanding mobile commerce market in Asia. Movaya co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Stanley Wang, has joined Digby as Vice President of Engineering.

"We're thrilled to be joining forces with Digby at this critical stage of market development," said Phil Yerkes, co-founder and Chairman of Movaya. "The transaction will allow our mobile commerce vision to be realized through the Digby Mobile Commerce Suite, and it provides a very exciting opportunity for all of Movaya team members."

AT&T announced the acquisition Plusmo, Inc., a leading provider of cross-platform mobile application solutions.

They claim Plusmo brings to AT&T an open standards technology that will simplify mobile application development, accelerate innovation and deliver a better application experience for consumers.

Plusmo will become a part of AT&T Interactive, and the Plusmo mobile application development platform is expected to be used by multiple AT&T subsidiaries, including AT&T Mobility. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"Plusmo's technology will help us build upon the success and momentum we're experiencing in mobile local search, which continues to see strong growth," said David Krantz, president and CEO, AT&T Interactive. "The addition of Plusmo adds a new dimension to our technology prowess through its multi-platform approach. It highlights our commitment to invest in mobile application innovation and search leadership."

"With the increasing demand for mobile services and applications, it's an opportune time for Plusmo to be joining the AT&T family," said Krishna Vedati, CEO of Plusmo. "Plusmo's mobile platform capabilities will help contribute to AT&T's effort to accelerate consumer adoption of mobile applications as well as expand the opportunity for publishers, media brands, service companies and developers to reach a large and coveted audience across a broad range of devices."

Syniverse Technologies will acquire VeriSign, Inc.'s messaging business for $175 million, subject to working capital adjustments.

The proposed acquisition will combine Syniverse's NEXTAdvanced Messaging Hub, the industry's first comprehensive enhanced messaging hub, and other NEXT messaging offerings with four of VeriSign's operator and enterprise messaging solutions:

• Inter-Carrier Gateway enables operators to deliver inter-carrier person-to-person SMS and MMS messages across geographies and technologies.


• PictureMail provides state-of-the-art MMS platform with core components that include a hosted MMS service center (MMSC) for MMS routing, handset photo applications, a social networking interface, and photo storage and sharing capabilities.


• Premium Messaging Gateway manages delivery of "off-portal" or third-party content to subscribers.


• Mobile Enterprise Solutions enables businesses to send time- and event-based messages or alerts via voice, text message or email to customers, employees or partners, and allows operators to offer their high-value customers a broader array of services, including enterprise and mobile financial services.

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Deutsche Bank and Alston & Bird LLP provided advisory services to Syniverse in connection with the transaction.

There may be a much better BlackBerry browser experience coming to a BlackBerry near you. BlackBerry-maker RIM has acquired Torch Mobile.

The Torch' team of developers will join RIM's global organization and will now be focused on utilizing their WebKit-based mobile browser expertise to contribute to the ongoing enhancement of the BlackBerry platform. WebKit is used for the iPhone and the Palm Pre.

Torch Mobile's team of developers has been actively involved in Open Source development and includes contributors, Committers and Reviewers of the WebKit project. As part of RIM, these developers will continue to be active participants in the WebKit development community.

Torch made the Iris Browser, an advanced, high-performance and versatile web browser application for mobile and embedded devices. Based on the WebKit rendering engine, it is specifically designed to function in resource-constrained environments. It brings the full Web experience to mobile phones, set-top boxes, mobile Internet devices, portable media players, Ultra-Mobile PCs and other embedded devices - in a fast and user-friendly manner.

Here's how a Valley Girl would report this story, "Like you know, MySpace, like, really, really likes, iLike. Like totally for sure. So like, iLike helps you. like, find music that's like music you like. So MySpace buys like, iLike and then they like work on music likes together."

MySpace announced an agreement to acquire iLike, a leading social music discovery service. The acquisition brings together two companies who share a common vision revolving around social discovery and distribution of quality content.

"The iLike acquisition advances our relentless pursuit of innovation and the need to create new distributed social experiences in music and beyond," said Owen Van Natta, Chief Executive Officer of MySpace. "We are deeply committed to bringing world class talent into all areas of the company and this acquisition demonstrates our focus on this objective."

Microsoft and Yahoo finally got in the search business bed together, Microsoft will power Yahoo search while Yahoo also becomes the sales force for Microsoft's premium properties. Yahoo will continue to provide online destinations and web products.

Micrsoft's Steve Ballmer noted that the deal gives Bing the scale to compete.

The deal must be approved by regulators to go through.

We received a link to news release here are the details:

For Web users and advertisers, this deal will accelerate the pace and breadth of innovation by combining both companies' complementary strengths and search platforms into a market competitor with the scale to fuel sustained development in search and search advertising. Users will find what they care about faster and with more personal relevance. Microsoft's competitive search platforms will lead to more value for advertisers, better results for web publishers, and increased innovation and efficiency across the Internet.

Sprint Nextel is buying Virgin Mobile USA, for a total equity value of approximately $483 million, which includes the value of Sprint's current 13.1% fully diluted ownership interest in Virgin Mobile USA.

They believe that the acquisition will strengthen Sprint's position in the growing prepaid segment by bringing together under one umbrella the iconic Virgin Mobile brand with Sprint's successful Boost Mobile business. These complementary prepaid brands, each with a distinctive offer, style and appeal to different customer demographics, will continue to serve existing and prospective customers following the completion of the transaction.

They listed the Transaction Benefits

• Strengthens Sprint's position in the fast growing prepaid segment.
• Enhances cross selling of full suite of Sprint products and services across a larger target audience.
• Free cash flow accretive for Sprint before synergies.
• Synergies to be derived from general and administrative reductions, operational efficiencies, and streamlined distribution.
• Sprint gains deeper managerial talent with additional expertise in the prepaid segment.

Nokia acquired certain assets of cellity. cellity is a privately owned mobile software company which employs 14 people in Hamburg, Germany. Nokia will acquire the cellity team to strengthen its competencies in the area of social networking. cellity’s current service will not transfer to Nokia and the service will be discontinued. cellity currently offers a solution to collect and securely store users’ contacts in one place. The service is an easy way to connect people on the mobile and the web.cellity AG offers ervices for aggregating address book data and connects all popular communication channels. Its innovative Address book 2.0 tool enables all contact data to be imported from a wide variety of sources (cellphone address books, Outlook, Twitter, social networks) to one place. Users can access the complete feature set from the cellity Communicator 2.0 interface, including conventional telephony, short text messaging, sending emails from their cellphone, free messaging, Twitter updates, communication with social networks and phone conferencing. The cellity Communicator 2.0 can be used on any cellphone or web browser and keeps data dependably secure and synchronized.

Research In Motion Limited (RIM) maker of BlackBerry smartphones and Visto Corporation ("Visto") announced  that they have entered into a definitive agreement to settle all outstanding worldwide patent litigation between the companies.

Visto was the first company to offer push email outside a network in 1996. They previously won a patent settlement with Microsoft in 2008. Visto acquired Good Technology on March 2, 2009 another company it also sued. They then changed the Visto name to Good Technology.

RIM will get a perpetual and fully-paid license on all Visto patents, a transfer of certain Visto intellectual property, a one-time payment by RIM of US $ 267.5 million and the parties executing full and final releases in respect of all outstanding worldwide litigation.

The settlement is expected to be completed during the week of July 20, 2009 and is subject to certain closing conditions.

Nuance Communications acquired of Jott voice-to-text service provider. Jott currently offers a voicemail to text service, note via phone, sales applications, and an API for development.

The combined Nuance and Jott teams plan to focus on several key voice-to-text initiatives:

• Nuance plans to package and offer Jott Assistant to mobile operators as part of its voice services portfolio, including Nuance Voicemail-to-Text.
• Nuance, together with its Enterprise Unified Communications partners, will offer a secure, highly scalable and differentiated Enterprise package including Nuance Voicemail-to-Text, Messaging, and Collaboration.
• Nuance will continue to mainstream and expand the CRM partner program through its existing CRM partnerships, enabling enterprise application providers to better meet the needs of the evolving professional mobile market.

"We've seen dramatically increased demand for our mobile voice solutions, because they offer real business value, are easy to deploy, and are a delight to use," said John Pollard, co-founder, Jott. "Nuance has consistently delivered groundbreaking mobile applications to billions of people worldwide. Our combined expertise will bring innovative and differentiated voice services to a variety of markets with tremendous scale."

BOKU, Inc.announced its payments service for global consumers to make online purchases of digital and virtual goods with their mobile phones. The claim they are creating a new standard for the mobile, by bringing bank-grade mobile payments to the web.

The service allows customers to pay for goods both real and virtual by giving their phone number.

The acquired Paymo and mobillcash. The received venture capital funding.

"We're very excited about the future of BOKU -- with Mobillcash's European success, Paymo's international reach, and stellar additions to the management team, the company is now very well positioned to lead the mobile payments market," stated Danny Rimer, Partner at Index Ventures.

BOKU's acquisitions of Paymo and the Mobillcash's payments give them 1.6 billion potential customers in 50+ countries on 170 mobile operators.

RIM has confirmed that it has bought Dash Navigation but hasn't revealed many details on the purchase.

Dash's technology turns a  personal navigation device (GPS) into a traffic reporting tool, also called a traffic probe.  Last year, Dash made a device that tracked its users' road speed and location and created traffic reports for other Dash PND users. The device didn't sell well and was pulled from the market.

RIM has not reported if BlackBerry smartphones will in turn become traffic probes to create a traffic service.

Intel Corporation has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Wind River Systems Inc,  a leading software vendor in embedded devices, and will become part of Intel’s strategy to grow its processor and software presence outside the traditional PC and server market segments into embedded systems and mobile handheld devices.

Wind River will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel and continue with its current business model of supplying leading-edge products and services to its customers worldwide.

“This acquisition will bring us complementary, market-leading software assets and an incredibly talented group of people to help us continue to grow our embedded systems and mobile device capabilities,” said Renee James, Intel vice president and general manager of the company’s Software and Services Group. “Wind River has thousands of customers in a wide range of markets, and now both companies will be better positioned to meet growth opportunities in these areas.”

Handmark will acquire FreeRange Communications. FreeRange Communications, offers a unique mobile publishing platform that enables media companies and content publishers around the world to create their own branded, always-on mobile applications.

Some of FreeRange's  key partnersinclude The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, CBS, Travelocity Business, The New York Knicks, Portland TrailBlazers, NewsGator, PaidContent, and Fierce Markets.

Handmark will build upon FreeRange Communications' relationships with media
companies and content publishers by expanding its mobile publishing platform
technology.

"This partnership is fantastic news for media companies, wireless carriers, and handset
providers looking to establish a mobile presence or enhance their products and services
with compelling mobile content," said Paul Reddick, Handmark CEO. "FreeRange
brings unique technology, expertise, and relationships that complement our position as
a leading provider of mobile media solutions.

Data services analytics firm Neuralitic Systems, in Montreal announced that the Blackberry Partners Fund has invested $3 million for a stake in the firm. The latest funding brings the total investment in Neuralitic over the last four months to more than $10 million.

Sybase, has acquired paybox Solutions AG, mobile payment solutions provider.Sybase will now provide mobile operators, financial institutions and merchants with a full suite of mobile payment solutions.

A privately held company founded in 1999 and headquartered in Raunheim, Germany, paybox will be integrated into Sybase 365, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sybase, Inc. As a provider of the broadest mobile commerce offering, paybox also brings Sybase a proven track record and a solid customer base.

Qualcomm has acquired certain graphics and multimedia technology assets, intellectual property and resources that were formerly AMD’s handheld business.

The acquisition is expect to enhance Qualcomm’s multimedia capabilities.

Nokia a has signed an agreement for Check Point Software Technologies to acquire Nokia's security appliance business.

The two businesses have collaborated for over a decade to deliver industry-leading enterprise security solutions, and this agreement is the natural culmination of that long-standing collaboration.

Research In Motion maker of the BlackBerry Storm has acquired Chalk Media Corp.