acquisitions
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Garmin to purchase Navigon, plans to complete acquisition by late July
News of Garmin's plans to acquire Navigon leaked out earlier this month, but we now have official word that the GPS giant will bring the smaller German company under its wing beginning in late July. Pending regulatory approval, the deal would have Navigon, one of the largest GPS brands in Europe, functioning as a subsidiary of Garmin, which has a much stronger presence in North America. The companies were unable to reveal any financial information, though previous estimates priced the deal in the "mid-double-digit million" Euro range. Navigon says it's not ready to share any details concerning the acquisition, but we're unlikely to see major effects in the US, where the company has smartphone apps but hasn't sold dedicated GPS devices in several years.
Garmin in talks to buy Navigon?
It's hard out there for a company making endangered gadgets. According to Reuters, flailing satnav maker Navigon could be acquired by none other than Garmin, which has struggled itself to maintain strong handheld navigator sales in the face of stiff competition from smartphones. The deal could be worth somewhere in the "mid-double-digit million" Euro range -- a none-too-helpful estimate, but enough for us to understand that the personal navigator market is in such a state that Garmin could scoop up its rival for a pretty modest sum. Garmin, for its part, has been doing well, considering -- it's the top navigator brand in the US (a market Navigon has long since exited), and its profit nearly tripled in the most recent quarter. That's largely thanks to those bestselling navigators, but also because the company's been wise enough to reinvent itself as a purveyor of running watches and expand its boating and aviation businesses. In any case, if the Navigon brand is going bye bye, it looks like we could find out as soon as this month.
Google to buy Modu patents, hopefully leave Nokia alone
It took complete failure to do it, but it looks like Modu founder Dov Moran finally found that new source of capital he went hunting for last November. In an effort to pay back creditors and unpaid wages, the firm's patent portfolio is slated to be snatched up by Google for roughly $4.8 million. What's Mountain View going to do with a mess of ultra-lite modular phone patents? It didn't come up, but we wouldn't be too surprised if it had something to do with its Danger-powered hardware wing and Android Open Accessory. Putting Modu to rest hasn't phased 'ol Dov, though; Israeli news source Calcalist reports that he's already invested three million smackers in a mysterious new start up -- about which Moran remains tight lipped. Goodnight, Modu; we'll always remember you as the audacious underdog who had the brass to tell Nokia to say their prayers.
Microsoft may be about to buy Skype
If you were hoping Skype's busted UI and security vulnerabilities would get major improvements in the future, this latest news might kill that hope. According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft is in talks to buy Skype for nearly US$8 billion. On the surface of it, this seems a mystifying move by Microsoft. eBay owned Skype once upon a time, but the VoIP service regularly lost money for eBay, and Skype's long-term debt is in excess of half a billion dollars. However, this could be a potential coup for Microsoft's mobile OS; if Skype gets directly integrated into Windows Phone 7, that will definitely complicate the mobile landscape. If the deal goes through, it probably doesn't mean the end of Skype for the Mac or iOS. In fact, with Microsoft's greater resources behind it, Skype's service may even improve. Either way, I hope this gives Apple a much-needed kick in the pants to improve FaceTime, because if Microsoft does indeed wind up owning Skype, I don't want to have to rely on it as my sole source of 3G-enabled video chat anymore.
Zentia developer ChangYou spends $68 million on a browser game company
Brower-based gaming is starting to really catch on, with a variety of games either staking out the browser as the sole required program or offering play options to browser-bound players. ChangYou, the development company most known to western readers for its game Zentia, has apparently decided that the browser field is worth investing in to the tune of $68.3 million, as it was just announced today that the company had purchased a controlling interest in Chinese company Shenzhen 7Road Technology Co. The acquisition is intended to complete on June 30th, with up to $32 million more up for grabs if Shenzhen 7Road manages to meet certain performance milestones through the end of next year. While there's plenty of reason to speculate about what this means for the future, it's certainly interesting to note that a free-to-play game developer is making such a large investment in a browser company -- an action that could have long-term ramifications for both present and future games.
Gazillion press release clarifies Netdevil layoff rumors
The NetDevil/LEGO Universe brouhaha that unfolded earlier this morning is officially official thanks to a press release just published by Gazillion Entertainment. Gazillion has formally agreed to sell its development stake in the LEGO Universe MMO to the LEGO Group (the game's publisher and custodian of the world-famous toy brand). Most of the LEGO devs, formerly employed by NetDevil (a Gazillion subsidiary), have received employment offers from the LEGO Group and will continue iterating on the game from the company's Louisville, Colorado studio. Gazillion is re-focusing its ongoing development efforts into browser games, according to President and COO David Brevik. "The transition of members of our team to the LEGO Group enables us to focus completely on internally-published, free-to-play game businesses," he said.
Sony buys back Toshiba's Cell plant for 50 billion yen, makes a killing and plans a CMOS fab
Looks like Toshiba's Cell processor ambitions didn't quite pan out -- Japanese news sources are reporting that the company's selling its Nagasaki manufacturing plant back to Sony for 50 billion yen, or roughly $597 million in US money. Considering that Toshiba originally purchased the semiconductor facility for 100 90 billion yen (then $835 million) back in 2008, it seems like Sony's making out like a bandit here -- and it may have just found the perfect place to build more CMOS chips for its high-end camera lineup, too. Sony reportedly told the Nikkei Business Daily that it may repurpose the facility to produce HD image sensors for cameras and smartphones. What will happen to the chip that launched 40 million PS3s and a graphics co-processor or two? With any luck, we'll find out at CES 2011 quite soon.
DeNA acquiring ngmoco for $400 million
DeNA, a Japanese mobile internet company, is set to purchase mobile publisher ngmoco, best known for Rolando and Topple, for a whopping $400 million. The combination of the two companies, according to the announcement, will create "the world's largest mobile social games platform company." The ngmoco shareholders and employees will receive $300 million in cash and securities, with an additional $100 million contingent on performance milestones. Gamasutra points out that this is just the latest acquisition by DeNA, which has slowly been making selective purchases in the western market. This is also just the latest social media purchase with an incredible dollar figure attached. Disney recently purchased Playdom for over $500 million, while EA acquired Playfish late last year for $300 million. -- oh yeah, and there's also that rumored $100 million investment by Google in Zynga. Now, let us all hold a moment of silence for sanity.
Gameforge buys majority stake in Frogster
MMO business news isn't normally as sexy as the latest press release from BioWare or as divisive as the newest F2P conversion announcement. That said, occasionally an industry-related story comes along that indicates something equally big is in the water. Today's announcement of Gameforge's bid to take control of noted free-to-play publisher Frogster seems destined to turn a few industry heads, including ours. Gameforge, which heretofore has specialized in smallish F2P games like Cabal, has just acquired a 60 percent majority holding in Frogster, the German publisher known primarily for distributing Runes of Magic. The purchase deal went through at $33 US a share, which places Frogster's overall value in the neighborhood of $85 million US. Frogster, and now Gameforge, is looking to grow its portfolio not only with Runes of Magic but also by publishing the forthcoming Mythos dungeon crawler as well as by securing the European publishing rights to the highly anticipated TERA action MMO from Bluehole Studio. The Gameforge folks have been busy little bees this summer, as they earlier announced an agreement with CBS to publish several browser-based games centered around the Star Trek intellectual property.
Apple acquires virtual assistant search app maker Siri
Apple has acquired Siri, a company that makes a virtual assistant app. Siri was inspired by DARPA's CALO -- the Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes -- project. Originally designed to help streamline military personnel's activities, the consumer app focuses on helping you find things like restaurants, making use of speech recognition to boot. Essentially a smart search, there's plenty of speculation of course as to what this means about the direction that Apple might be taking... and that direction seems to lead towards Google-y territory. Now we don't want to speculate too much, but we'll be watching to see how this plays out over the next few weeks. The terms of the acquisition aren't known, meaning we have no idea how much Apple paid for the small startup, but Business Insider guesses the deal could be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 to $200 million.
HP buys Palm: the liveblog
Well, we can't say we were expecting HP to step up and be the one to buy Palm, but here we are, getting ready to liveblog the conference call. The deal is worth some $1.2b, and we've heard that HP is "doubling down" on webOS, so we're eager to find out what's in store -- and, quite frankly, we're excited to repeatedly hear that it's really, really true. It's about to start at 5PM EST, keep it locked right here.
Intel looking to 'deploy capital' on smartphone and other CE acquisitions
Say you're the world's largest producer of desktop processors, you've got a ton of cash ($16.3 billion to be exact) burning a hole in your pocket, and you're watching the entire mobile industry grow into a monster before your very eyes with virtually no skin in the game. Sure, you've got MeeGo and Moorestown up your sleeve -- but considering that they're distant underdogs with no global domination strategy (or product, for that matter) in sight, it might be time to play some hardball, yeah? CFO Stacy Smith commented this week that the company is "looking at what [it believes] can accelerate [its] progress" in the smartphone game -- and, more broadly, the consumer electronics game -- and that it "can and will deploy capital" if it sees something it likes, just as it did with its Wind River Systems buy last year. Intel has had shockingly little relevance in the race to dominate the pocket ever since it offloaded XScale to Marvell a few years back; is it time for these guys to embrace ARM again, or can they find a way to put x86 cores in devices that people like?
Nuance acquires MacSpeech
Nuance Communications, the company behind Dragon Dictate and Dragon Search for the iPhone, has acquired MacSpeech, the company that makes MacSpeech Dictate and other voice recognition apps for the Mac platform. The first product from MacSpeech was iListen, which was available until 2008. At that time it was the only speech recognition app that could provide dictation services for the Mac after IBM discontinued ViaVoice. iListen was replaced with MacSpeech Dictate, and the company licensed the Dragon recognition engine created by Nuance for the program. MacSpeeech Dictate was a big improvement over iListen, but it still wasn't as powerful or as full-featured as the Dragon versions running on the Windows Platform. That's all going to change. Last week I talked with Peter Mahoney, a Senior Vice President at Nuance, who told me the acquisition of MacSpeech will speed up the flow of new features to MacSpeech Dictate. At some point the program will acquire the Dragon name. Mahoney told me we can expect to see a macro scripting language, integrated support for digital recorders, and accuracy improvements. Nuance made a big splash on the iPhone platform with Dragon Dictate [iTunes link] and Dragon Search [iTunes link]. Nuance also provided the speech recognition for Siri [iTunes link], which has received rave reviews.
Apple flush with cash and ready to buy
Got a company you're trying to sell? Apple might have a check with your name on it -- BusinessWorld reports that they're in the mood for picking up some new businesses lately. Even after high profile acquisitions like LaLa and Quattro Wireless, Apple's still got plenty of cash in the bank, and they're looking to buy. BW points to the hire of Adrian Perica, a former Goldman Sachs banker, as the company's "first dedicated M&A specialist," and says that with Perica on board, Apple's looking to get the jump on rivals like Google and pick up some new technology and talent via acquisition. So what kind of companies will they be picking up? Apple is a company that's always on the move. While the Mac market is strong, they seem to have realized that their main strength lies in breaking new ground, from music players to smartphones, and so they'll likely pick up companies slightly different from their current core products. They also have a history of buying smaller companies, so you probably won't see them do gigantic merger deals. Rather, they'll find a company working on a new tech that interests them, and then just swallow the little firm whole (see Cover Flow and any number of their other pickups in the last decade). So if your ten-person company is working on, say, a revolutionary new tablet control scheme, or a new category of personal computing, that knocking on your door might be Apple with a truckload of money. [via MacRumors]
Google to acquire Gizmo5, swing at Skype with VoIP-enabled Google Voice?
There's no official word on this yet, but the inimitable Michael Arrington says that Google's up and purchased VoIP company Gizmo5 for "around $30 million in cash." You know, pocket change for the crew in Mountain View. The deal would presumably bring Gizmo's SIP-based VoIP talents to Google Voice, taking it from quirky phone-management service to complete end-to-end calling solution, and instantly catapulting it into direct competition with Skype. Heavy stuff -- we'll see if Google or Gizmo5 confirms Mssr. Arrington's report sometime soon.
Ubisoft acquires TrackMania dev to build online cred
Ubisoft must have found TrackMania creator Nadeo to really be speaking its language, as the French publisher has acquired the, uh, French developer in a bid to drift into the online gaming sector. "Through Nadeo, Ubisoft will gain an expert team, one of the best online technologies around as well as a flagship multiplayer game that enjoys an unrivaled reputation among a loyal and committed community," Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot observed. The acquisition of Nadeo comes just weeks after the developer announced a true TrackMania sequel, TrackMania 2, at the Paris Games Festival.
Ubisoft failed at courting Cryptic before the Atari takeover
According to CFO Alain Martinez, Ubisoft was also looking into acquiring Cryptic before Atari stepped in and inked a deal. Though they are disappointed at having missed this opportunity, there seems to be no shortage of acquisition options. Martinez states that they are looking at taking over two to three small companies in the next few months, but details of what products this may involve are unknown.Ubisoft has been busy advertising their latest console-and-PC title, Prince of Persia, for the holiday season and working on Assassin's Creed 2 - currently expected to be released in fiscal year 2010. CEO Yves Guillemot states they are planning to launch online game products in 2009, but says the experience will be more casual than the expansive Cryptic titles like Champions Online and Star Trek Online. This would have been one giant leap in moving to the MMO model.
GameStop officially acquires NZ's Gamesman
Even the Kiwis were no match for the armed and fully operational GameStop empire as it acquired New Zealand's largest independent gaming chain. GameDaily reports that New Zealand's The Gamesman will be absorbed into the GameStop collective and bring the company's presence in the country to 38 stores. This news confirms rumors from last month of The Gamesman's demise.On the bright side, Phil McPhee, general manager of The Gamesman, says the move will "enhance the service and experience for customers." Wow, Gamesman's customer service must have been awful! Good thing it got bought out by GameStop.
Diablo3.com acquired by Blizzard
A few weeks ago, we posted about a countdown on the site that was going towards May 1st, and if you check your calendars, you can see that the day has come, and Diablo3.com is now redirecting to Diablofans.com. There is a post on the site saying that Blizzard contacted the site a few months ago to pick up the domain name, and while the owner (who also runs I-Mockery) wanted it to stay a fan site, he couldn't help but sell to Blizzard. We had speculated that it would mean an official takeover, and while it hasn't actually happened yet (right now the redirect is in place, and we're not sure how long that'll be the case), it looks like we were right.The obvious conclusion here, of course, is that Blizzard is ramping up for a Diablo 3 announcement -- no doubt sweet, sweet candy to the ears of Blizzard fans everywhere. And that's not a huge assumption -- it's been rumored for a while, and what other reason would Blizzard have to start marking their territory? Of course, as the owners of the Diablo trademarks, Blizzard could probably have claimed the domain any time, though from the post on the new site, it sounds like they actually paid money for it -- how much, we're not sure. (they didn't -- see update)At any rate, if you're going to be optimistic about there being a Diablo 3, the new date to mark on your calendars is Saturday, June 28th -- that's the date that the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational starts in Paris. Last year, they used the event to announce Starcraft 2, so who knows -- maybe this year we'll see Deckard Cain in a cinematic saying, "It's about time."Update: Actually, the I-Mockery guys said they gave it to Blizzard for free, just because they were Blizzard fans, which is kind of cool. Also, the redirect will apparently last until June 1st, at which point, Blizzard will take over Diablo3.com. Our guess is that then it'll redirect to Blizzard.com (see diablo.com), at least until an announcement is made.
Bill Gates: philanthropist, nerd, beer baron
Being the shrewd businessman that he is, Bill Gates has just invested a significant amount of money in one of the few products consumed during both good times and bad: alcohol. Actually Femsa, the Mexican brewery in which Gates now owns a $392 million stake through his Cascade Investment LLC fund, does a lot more than just brew booze: according to Reuters, it's also the world's second-largest Coke bottler as well as operator of Oxxo, Latin America's largest convenience store chain. When asked how he felt about the Microsoft founder moving in on his home turf, fellow billionaire Carlos Slim reportedly shrugged off the threat, boasting, "Not only am I a wealthier man than Mr. Gates, but he couldn't even make it through half a Power Hour with his nueva cerveza."
