Acqusition
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Google is buying cybersecurity company Mandiant for $5.4 billion
Mandiant is the company the banks and phone companies call when they get hacked. Now it'll be part of Google's Cloud platform.
Dish buys Ting Mobile to expand its wireless business
Dish is adding another piece to its growing wireless business.
Why is Microsoft buying Minecraft?
Microsoft announced this week that it's buying hugely popular game franchise Minecraft for $2.5 billion. For that money, Microsoft gets rights to the game and ownership of its Stockholm, Sweden-based development studio, Mojang. It doesn't retain the company's founders or Minecraft's infamously outspoken creator, Markus "Notch" Persson. Does that sound like a lot, $2.5 billion? Well, it is in human dollars, but not so much when you're Microsoft and you've got $85 billion in "cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments." Regardless of the fact that this week's deal only cost Microsoft around 3 percent of that, here's the real kicker (in the form of a statement from Microsoft): "Microsoft expects the acquisition to be break-even in FY15 on a GAAP basis." Woof, that's a doozy of a sentence right there. Here's the translation: Microsoft expects the purchase of Minecraft/Mojang to make it a lot of money. And that is why Microsoft bought Minecraft.
Sky spends £5 billion to become one of Europe's biggest pay-TV operators
Rumors of an assault on Europe have circled for quite some time, but today BSkyB has finally made a move to expand its pay-TV empire outside of the UK. The company today announced it has agreed to pay 21st Century Fox a total of £4.9 billion ($8.33 billion) to acquire Sky Italia and buy the majority share (57 percent) of Sky Deutschland. If the deal is given the green light by regulators, the newly-formed Sky Europe would emerge with almost 20 million European customers.
IGN acquired by Ziff Davis
IGN and its related sites have been acquired by j2 Global through its Ziff Davis subsidiary. Although the sale price was undisclosed, Bloomberg cites sources who claim it was less than the $100 million News Corp was asking for the bundle. Ziff Davis will now take over IGN, UGO, 1UP and AskMen.com. According to j2, these sites have over 600 advertisers and 53 million global monthly unique visitors.The historical context for all this gets crazy and incestuous, so strap in, we'll try to make this easy. The zombie Ziff Davis at the heart of this current deal was acquired by j2 Global for $167 million in late 2012, after Ziff's years of financial difficulty and bankruptcy.The incarnation of Ziff Davis that game industry watchers probably remember is the one that once upon a time ran 1UP and EGM. Those properties were sold in 2009 to the Hearst corporation, which had also acquired UGO earlier. This led to the death of EGM and reinterpretation of 1UP.Two years later, News Corp., which owned IGN, took over the Hearst properties and, thusly, the former Ziff Davis site 1UP and Hearst's UGO.So, now, here we are, with the reincarnated Ziff Davis taking over IGN. We think we got all that right.
Lenovo debunks RIM deal rumors, says CFO was just chatting
Lenovo turned a few heads last week when its CFO mentioned RIM as a possible acquisition target or partner, and with many eyes peering in its direction, the company's felt the need to clarify its relationship with the BlackBerry maker. An English-language statement -- courtesy of The Next Web -- says Wong Wai Ming was "speaking broadly about M&A strategy," and only included RIM in this comment as the interviewer asked about Lenovo's interest in the company specifically. While it doesn't provide any more fuel for the speculation fire, there's no denial here, and it's worth remembering that Wong mentioned the two have talked about potential arrangements, according to the original Bloomberg report. Damage limitation statement deployed, we doubt Lenovo will be bringing this up again unless anything formal happens. In the meantime, RIM's got slightly more immediate matters to concern itself with.
Starbreeze attempting acquisition of Payday: The Heist studio
Starbreeze, the Swedish studio that brought the world the surprise hit Chronicles of Riddick and the recent reboot of Syndicate, is attempting an acquisition of Payday: The Heist studio Overkill Software. Pending approval by Starbreeze's shareholders, the move will see Overkill's IP (including Payday) and staff become part of Starbreeze's stable.Beyond the acquisition of IP and staff, Overkill is set to establish a new Starbreeze office based out of Stockholm, Sweden. "Starbreeze has graphical emphasis, and Overkill has total focus on innovative gameplay. Together we form a unique constellation of creative forces," Overkill creative director Ulf Andersson said of the acquisition in a press release.Overkill Software was formed in the ashes of former third-party mega studio Grin Software back in 2009, after it collapsed following several commercially unsuccessful projects. Brothers Bo and Ulf Andersson started Overkill, and it's unclear how their roles will change (if at all) in the new setup. The acquisition – if approved by Starbreeze's shareholders – is set to go into effect in mid-June.
Trials HD dev acquired by Ubisoft for undisclosed amount
Wildly successful indie developer RedLynx is now a part of French mega-publisher Ubisoft. RedLynx announced the acquisition this morning (evening for the Finland-based outfit) via its forums, where company CEO Rero Virtala explained the decision. "We were attracted by Ubisoft's focus on creativity and quality," he said, also pointing to the publisher's "long-term strategy on both the traditional and digital distribution video game markets." Ubisoft has been pushing quality digital titles hard over the last year, with everything from unique one-offs like Outland and From Dust to re-releases of classics like TMNT, Prince of Persia, and Beyond Good & Evil HD. The publisher was no doubt attracted to RedLynx's massively popular Trials series, which is set to receive a sequel in the coming months.
AT&T 'confident' T-Mobile deal to close in Q1 2012
AT&T this morning offered up some earnings tidbits, and there's some good news in there for the iPhone-wielding mobile network. In its best-ever second quarter for smartphone sales, the company moved more than 5.6 million of the devices. AT&T raked in consolidated revenues of $31.5 billion for the quarter, up $680 million over last year. The Former Mrs. Bell also revealed that it is "confident" that, much to the chagrin of Sprint and others, its planned purchase of T-Mobile is set to be completed by the first quarter of 2012. AT&T will be offering up more financial details in an earnings call later today, including, no doubt, the much-rumored plans for magenta carpeting in its global headquarters. Update: The company didn't talk too much about its interior decorating plans, but it did insist that it is "look[ing] forward to working with the FCC," and while it still has "work to do, we remain confident that we can satisfy the FCC and DOJ." AT&T also happily pointed out support from governors of 26 states. The acquisition, it added, will offer "enormous efficiencies" and "is the surest and fastest way to address the unique network constraints and spectrum shortages affecting AT&T."
Microsoft's acquisition of Skype for $8.5 billion becomes official
It was pretty much known about since last night, but Microsoft and Skype have now obliterated any lingering doubt in the matter: the Redmond-based software giant will acquire the internet telephony company for a cool $8.5 billion in cash. Xbox and Kinect support are explicitly mentioned in the announcement of this definitive agreement, as is Windows Phone integration -- both the gaming and mobile aspects being presumably key incentives for Microsoft to acquire Skype. Importantly, this purchase shouldn't affect Skypers outside of the Microsoft ecosystem, as Steve Ballmer's team promises to continue "to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms." Skype was first sold for a relative bargain at $2.5b to eBay in 2005, who in turn sold most of it off to Silver Lake in 2009 at an overall valuation of $2.75b, and now Redmond is concluding proceedings by tripling those earlier prices and offering Skype a permanent home. A new Microsoft Skype Division will now be opened up to accommodate the newcomers, with current Skype CEO Tony Bates becoming president of that operation and reporting directly to Ballmer. The deal is expected to close by the end of this year and you can read Microskype's full announcement after the break. Update: Microsoft has just disclosed a couple more details about the deal. It was signed last night, May 9th, though the price was finalized on April 18th. You can follow a live stream of Steve Ballmer and Tony Bates' presentation right here.
Google acquires speech synthesis outfit Phonetic Arts, plans to use Jack Donaghy's voice for everything
Don't ever knock Google for not reinvesting a little of that cheddar it's stacking in Mountain View. Barely two months after pulling the trigger on BlindType, El Goog has now sunk an undisclosed amount of money into Phonetic Arts, described as a speech synthesis company based in Cambridge, England. Naturally, Google's been toiling around the clock in an effort to better its speech technologies, and it looks as if it could be cutting out quite a few months (or years) of work with this one purchase. Phonetic Arts was known for being on the "cutting edge of speech synthesis, delivering technology that generates natural computer speech from small samples of recorded voice," and we get the impression that the team will be given clearance badges to enter Google's London-based engineering facility shortly. The company's own Mike Cohen is hoping that this will help us "move a little faster towards that Star Trek future" -- frankly, we're hoping to have Jack Donaghy's voice become the de facto standard in under a year. We hear some dudes at 30 Rock are already toying with a prototype...
Apple snags Liquidmetal IP, may just revive the eMac with an amorphous metal chassis
Ah, who are we kidding -- we're guessing a true, bona fide headless iMac would hit the market before the eMac ever makes a triumphant return, but it's surely a novel thought, no? In a recent 8-K filing with the SEC, Apple made public that it had essentially acquired "substantially all of [Liquidmetal's] intellectual property assets," not to mention a "perpetual, worldwide, fully-paid, exclusive license to commercialize such intellectual property in the field of consumer electronic products in exchange for a license fee." In other words, Apple just bought up the rights to integrate Liquidmetal's amorphous metal alloys into its product line, which would allow the company to create metallic wares without sweating the typical structural or strength limitations found in conventional metals. There's no mention of dollars exchanged here, nor any details on what exactly Apple plans to do with its newfound IP (shown after the break), but we're guessing the procurement team didn't sign the dotted line for kicks and giggles.
Apple acquires web mapping firm Poly9, probably has something up its sleeve
Per usual, it seems as if this deal has happened in the dark of the night, but thankfully for the curious among us, it's a bit difficult to disguise a caravan of humans escaping Québec and fleeing to Cupertino. According to a report in The Sun as well as an independent confirmation on our end, Apple has picked up a small Canadian firm by the name of Poly9. As of now, every last employee has been relocated to California, with the couple who declined left to find other work in the Great White North. Poly9's official website is also blanked out, but in the past, the company has been credited with developing loads of web-based mapping programs (primarily in Flash, crazily enough) as well as APIs for a handful of monolithic clients like Microsoft, Yahoo!, NORAD and MSNBC. Generally speaking, Apple tends to integrate its purchases into the workflow at a rather rapid clip, so we're actually expecting something to come of this in the not-too-distant future. What, exactly, remains to be seen. [Thanks, Anonymous]
Nokia jumps out of thin air, acquires bit-side
Can't say we saw this one coming. Out of seemingly nowhere, Nokia has up and acquired a privately held Berlin-based professional services and software company with 39 employees. As part of the agreement, Nokia will take on "substantially all assets of bit-side GmbH," and for some unexplained reason, that move will enable Nokia to "strengthen and accelerate its mobile development for Nokia Maps." According to Michael Halbherr, vice president and head of social location at Nokia: "Acquiring bit-side enables Nokia to offer consumers the world-leading mobile location applications, such as Maps, along with routing and navigation at an accelerated speed." It's stated that bit-side will be wrapped into Nokia's Services unit, but honestly, we're still left mostly in the dark as to what this all means. Dark and inscrutable, just how we like it.[Via MobilityUpdate]
Verizon Wireless closes Alltel acquisition, lays out path forward
Welp, that's that. But not really, because acquiring a company as big as Alltel and shoving it into a company as gigantic as Verizon Wireless simply can't be easy. To that end, VZW has issued a release that details the steps forward now that the deal itself is closed. For starters, Alltel employees below executive level will continue in their present jobs as Verizon Wireless assesses staffing needs, and Verizon intends to re-brand Alltel operations in retained markets (read: the ones not divested by force) in phases, beginning in the second quarter and continuing through the third quarter of 2009." As for Alltel subscribers, they won't need to take any action at this time, with everything in their current plan -- My Circle included -- remaining the same throughout the transition period. If you're interested in the rest (we're looking at you, loyal Alltel user), hop on down to the read link.[Via phonescoop]
DTS looks to expand its reach with Neural Audio acquisition
DTS, the company responsible for all those DTS-HD Master Audio tracks that you adore, has just announced that it's picking up Neural Audio in order to expand its reach. The company that it's acquiring is described as an "audio technology business that licenses branded intellectual property solutions for the creation, distribution and playback of music, movies, broadcast programs and video games," and DTS is hoping to use this to get branded technology offerings into satellite radio, automotive and gaming markets. The deal cost DTS a stiff $7.5 million for "certain assets and liabilities," and it may end up forking out up to $7.5 million more over the next five years if "certain conditions" are met. Way to look ahead, DTS -- now, we're totally expecting 7.1-channel Blu-ray surround systems in our 2010 model year vehicles. Cool?
Funai to acquire Philips' North American Blu-ray / DVD operations
We already saw the writing on the wall, but now the deed is purportedly done -- or close enough, anyway. Reuters has it that Japan's Funai Electric will take over Philips' North American DVD, Blu-ray and other audiovisual operations starting next month. It's anticipated that the deal will boost Funai's North American sales by around $332 million, and of course, maintaining that well-known Philips badge is sure to be of assistance in that department. The agreement lays out that Funai will make periodic royalty payments to use the Philips brand rather than just buying up the whole thing outrightly. First the TV division, now this -- is there anything left of Philips worth caring about in the US?
AT&T and Verizon finalize Rural Cellular / Dobson asset swap
Way back in autumn of last year, AT&T agreed to give up seven markets in its Dobson Communications buy in order to get the all-important FCC stamp of approval; just a few months ago, Verizon Wireless was forced to sell licenses in six markets in order to improve competition in the Rural Cellular markets that it was acquiring. Now, that whole nightmare of red tape has been all wrapped up, as suits and cube dwellers no doubt frantically tried to tie up loose ends before the New Year that should've been knotted weeks ago. Essentially, the deal means that AT&T Mobility has acquired some former Rural Cellular properties previously acquired by Verizon Wireless, while VZW has acquired from AT&T Mobility some former Dobson Communications properties. All the nitty-gritty details are in the read link below should you care to venture down.[Via phonescoop]
Analyst scratches head over potential AT&T / EchoStar deal
No sooner than chatter began flying over a potential AT&T / EchoStar deal, Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. is wondering who actually thought (or still thinks) that this is a match made in heaven. According to media analyst Craig Moffett, "the very notion of an AT&T / EchoStar combination is based on a flawed premise; i.e. that AT&T needs video in order to compete with cable." He went on to say that AT&T is losing phone lines to cable because cable simply "has a marginal cost advantage," and noted that pairing up the two "does nothing to address AT&T's underlying cost problem." Stepping back, we actually see quite a bit of logic in Mr. Moffett's reasoning, and when you mix in the fact that AT&T's U-Verse could pose "a strategic threat to EchoStar," one really wonders how effective a partnership would be.
