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acquisition posts

Polymer Vision gets new lease on life thanks to Wistron

by Tim Stevens posted Oct 29th 2009 at 7:36AM

Poor Readius, we barely knew ye and your folding e-ink screen before parent company Polymer Vision went bankrupt and, well, that was the end of that. Or was it? Wistron apparently made a bid for the remains of the company over the summer and, as of September, Polymer was acting as a division of the Acer spin-off. The Wistron board has finally approved the €12 million ($18 million) investment and so where once there were two companies now there is one. The jury is still out on whether the Polymer Vision brand will survive, but its technology -- and legend -- will still burn.

Sprint buy apparently not on the table for Deutsche Telekom -- yet

by Chris Ziegler posted Sep 15th 2009 at 10:24PM

Eerily mirroring the situation with T-Mobile in the UK, disgruntled Deutsche Telekom shareholders are apparently now turning their attention to the company's US outpost, now that the British woes are on the fast track to resolution thanks to a tie-up with Orange. The Financial Times is reporting that the bell isn't tolling quite yet for T-Mobile USA -- key players are still on board with the company's plan to get back into the game with an accelerated 3G rollout, which means that alternative strategies aren't actively being considered right this second. Word has it that the clock has been set for mid-2010, though, at which point red ink on the balance sheet is going to mean a more drastic change in direction -- something like a merger with Sprint or a move to transform the carrier into an ultra-value brand concentrating on prepaid service with a possible MetroPCS or Leap / Cricket buy. What color do you get when you combine magenta and yellow, anyway?

RIM buys Torch Mobile, BlackBerrys might finally get a decent browser

by Nilay Patel posted Aug 24th 2009 at 11:43AM

The default BlackBerry browser has long been laughably sad, but it looks like things are about to get better: RIM's just acquired Torch Mobile, the developers behind the Iris mobile browser. If you'll recall, Iris is a well-received WebKit-based browser for Windows Mobile that offers tabbed browsing, touch, and a skinnable UI -- and we hear it does a pretty good job rendering pages as well. Of course, since it's Windows Mobile-only at the moment it'll be a while before BlackBerry fans actually see any results from this acquisition, but it's nice to see RIM taking some big steps to address what's become a major shortfall with the platform -- and hey, maybe that extra time is what it'll take to add the promised full Flash and Silverlight support to the system. Yep, lots of solid potential here -- now if only RIM would build in proper IMAP support, we'd be all set.

[Via MobileTechWorld, thanks Ike]

Pirate Bay acquired by Global Gaming Factory, going legit like Napster

by Thomas Ricker posted Jun 30th 2009 at 5:17AM

It's true, The Pirate Bay has agreed to being purchased by Global Gaming Factory (owner of a network of Internet cafes and gaming centers) for 60 million Swedish Krona or roughly $7.8 million. According to a press release, "GGF intends to launch new business models that allow compensation to the content providers and copyright owners." In a post on TPB's blog, the rogue file sharing site says that the project has been in the works for many years and should help evolve the site while trying to stay the same. Here's how they put it:

If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That's the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to. And - you can now not only share files but shares with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That's awesome and will take the heat of us.

We'll have to wait and see how this pans out but it certainly smacks of a Napster v2 like situation at first blush. Assuming of course the deal closes by August as anticipated.

Update: As a hint, perhaps, of what's to come, GGF also announced the purchase of Peerialism, a software company responsible for developing what GGF calls "P2P 2.0" file sharing technology.

[Thanks, JOKR Solutions]

Read -- The Pirate Bay blog post
Read -- Press Release

RIM buys Dash Navigation

by Nilay Patel posted Jun 4th 2009 at 3:38PM

Remember Dash? The upstart connected GPS maker who put out the much-loved Dash Express but didn't realize people didn't want to pay a monthly fee for GPS services and eventually folded in on itself? Well yeah -- they've just been snapped up by RIM, presumably meaning we'll see some nifty new online GPS action in future BlackBerrys. Terms of the deal aren't yet known, but we're eager to see how RIM plays with this with its carrier partners, most of whom charge extra fees for GPS features.

[Via Phone Scoop]

Intel snaps up Wind River, looks for that embedded systems edge

by Darren Murph posted Jun 4th 2009 at 10:09AM

Wind River Systems has been doing Android up right for quite some time, and evidently Intel is sick and tired of sitting on the outside looking in. Disregarding that massive EU fine for a moment, the company somehow managed to find time to pen a check in the amount of $884 million in order to fully acquire the aforesaid embedded systems company. The reason? Intel knows the CPU business is morphing into something entirely more elaborate, and it reckons a solid presence in the embedded devices segment (MIDs, UMPCs, etc.) is necessary to keep those profits up in the future. Honestly, such a pickup isn't really a shock; Intel has shown great interest in being a serious player in the handheld computing market, and its fledgling CE 3100 media processor could also benefit from a respectable layer of software behind it. Meanwhile, something tells us those Wind River guys are gearing up for the weekend of their lives.

Hilco / Gordon Brothers acquires Polaroid brand, assets and dignity

by Darren Murph posted Apr 17th 2009 at 8:41AM

After filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (again) in December of last year, Polaroid may have just made its last shakeable memory. Today, the Federal Bankruptcy court for the district of Minnesota has approved a motion for "substantially all the assets of Polaroid, including the Polaroid brand, intellectual property, inventory and other assets," to be acquired by Hilco Consumer Capital and Gordon Brothers Brands. If those names sound familiar, have a cookie on us. You see, this very same joint venture picked up The Sharper Image around this time last year, and while it's still unclear what these suits plan to do with the 72 year-old name, we are told that it doesn't plan on shelving it anytime soon. In fact, it's hoping to "partner with a number of global institutions in the ongoing development of the Polaroid brand." Personally, we would've used "revival" rather than "development," but we'll refrain from bursting any bubbles here.

Western Digital enters SSD market via $65m SiliconSystems acquisition

by Darren Murph posted Mar 30th 2009 at 11:07AM

Man, the consolidation efforts are really heating up. Just days after Cisco forked out a small fortune to acquire Pure Digital, HDD mainstay Western Digital has penned a check for $65 million in cold, hard cash in order to acquire SiliconSystems, Inc. Said outfit is an Aliso Viejo, California-based supplier of solid-state drives for the embedded systems market, and rather than wasting any more time falling behind in the SSD realm, WD figured it prudent to just buy the technology it needed to position itself as a legitimate competitor. WD has already made clear that it hopes to sell SSDs for the netbook, client and enterprise markets, and given that integration will begin "immediately," we're hoping to see some shipping products sooner rather than later.

Cisco acquiring Flip Video-maker Pure Digital for $590 million in stock

by Darren Murph posted Mar 19th 2009 at 8:59AM

Funny -- that patently absurd half a billion figure we heard tossed about earlier this month was low. In reality, Cisco has just announced its full intentions to acquire all of Pure Digital, the maker of the immensely popular Flip Video camcorder, for around $590 million in stock. According to Ned Hooper, senior vice president of Cisco's Corporate Development and Consumer Groups, the "acquisition of Pure Digital is key to Cisco's strategy to expand our momentum in the media-enabled home and to capture the consumer market transition to visual networking." To an outsider, the move may seem somewhat odd; after all, what's Cisco doing spending this much on a consumer product? Let's just say that uploading HD video requires loads of bandwidth, and Cisco's all about that. Expect the deal to close in Cisco's fiscal fourth quarter of 2009.

Cisco said to be buying Pure Digital for around $500 million

by Darren Murph posted Mar 9th 2009 at 12:39AM

Believe us people, popularity pays off. Just ask Pure Digital CEO Jonathan Kaplan, who is reportedly scrambling for ways to spend $80 million of the $500 million Cisco Systems is about to hand over in order to acquire the company. Granted, none of this has been confirmed just yet, but TechCrunch has it that the deal is all but done. Reportedly, Cisco's interested in bringing the firm into its portfolio in order to further push high-bandwidth using services. Obviously, user generated HD video fits pretty perfectly into that agenda. We suspect we'll be hearing more on the subject as the work week begins in earnest, but it sure sounds like Linksys is about to get a new cousin.

Hitachi acquires Fabrik, looks to expand market presence

by Darren Murph posted Feb 24th 2009 at 11:44AM

We keep hearing that it's a buyer's market out there, and for anyone with any amount of cash (that'd be Hitachi, in this scenario), the getting is pretty great. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (GST) has just announced that it has snapped up Fabrik, Inc., a privately-held supplier of personal and professional storage solutions. You may be more familiar with the said company's brands, as G-Technology and SimpleTech tend to ring bells much better than a name easily mistaken for clothing. According to Steve Milligan, President of Hitachi GST, the acquisition will soon become "the cornerstone for the next phase of Hitachi's business transformation," though he certainly didn't bother to elaborate. Who knows -- maybe one day soon we really will see Hitachi taking on the likes of Western Digital and LaCie in the external sector.

Fujitsu and Toshiba reach agreement on hard drive business deal

by Donald Melanson posted Feb 17th 2009 at 2:54PM

It's not exactly a huge surprise at this point, but Fujitsu and Toshiba have announced today that they've signed a memorandum of understanding on the transfer of Fujitsu's hard drive business to Toshiba, and that they plan to conclude a transfer contract "at an early date." To make the transition as smooth as possible, Fujitsu says it'll spinning off all its HDD-related business into a separate company in the interim, which Toshiba will buy an 80 percent stake in and make a Toshiba Group subsidiary. Then, once things are fully transitioned, Toshiba will buy up the remaining 20 percent and make the company a wholly owned subsidiary. Notably absent from today's announcement, however, is any word of a dollar figure, though previous reports had pegged the deal at anywhere from $335 to $447 million. Toshiba also doesn't seem like it'll be resting on its laurels once the deal is complete, saying that it hopes to increase its overall HDD market share 20 percent by the year 2015.

CSR gobbles up GPS chipmaker SiRF

by Donald Melanson posted Feb 10th 2009 at 8:58PM

Well, it looks like a few pesky patent issues weren't enough to keep CSR, mostly known for its Bluetooth chips, from snapping up omnipresent GPS chipmaker SiRF, with the two companies today announcing that they're set to fully combine their companies into one giant chipmaking operation. Under the all-share transaction valued at some $132.7 million, SiRF shareholders will get 27 percent of the newly formed company, to be known as CSR, while two SiRF directors will also get seats on the CSR board. Any further details are a bit hard to come by but, as CNET's Business Tech points out, CSR has increasingly been focusing on all-in-one solutions combining Bluetooth, WiFi, and whatnot, so it would stand to reason that SiRF's GPS know-how could be added to the mix.

Toshiba said to be nearing deal to buy Fujitsu's hard drive business

by Donald Melanson posted Jan 14th 2009 at 9:39PM

Hitachi may be out of the picture (if it was ever actually in the picture to begin with), but it looks like Toshiba is now very close to buying Fujitsu's hard drive business in a deal that's reported to be worth between 30 and 40 billion yen, or anywhere from $335 to $447 million. That would make Toshiba the world's largest supplier of hard drives for laptops and, according to Reuters, it could be all but a done deal by the end of the month, if a supposed meeting between company execs planned for this week goes as expected. The deal wouldn't include Fujitsu's plant in Nagano Prefecture, however, or the hard drive operations of its Yamagata Fujitsu subsidiary -- those would apparently be sold off separately for some extra cash if Fujitsu decides to exit the hard drive business altogether.

Verizon and Alltel to join in holy matrimony January 9th

by Chris Ziegler posted Jan 4th 2009 at 10:49PM

Following a good half year of courtship while the regulatory miscellany ran its course, Verizon's finally ready to take the plunge and call this $5.9 billion deal done. The combined juggernaut will amass a staggering 78 million subscribers, putting it roughly 3 million ahead of its closest rival, AT&T, though it'll do so at the cost of assuming some $22.9 billion in Alltel debt. Ultimately, the merger means some positions at Alltel headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas will get axed -- but hey, AT&T Mobility HQ's just a stone's throw away in Atlanta, so Verizon's headcount loss could ultimately be AT&T's gain.

[Via Phone Scoop]