Acquisitions in the mobile industry. These days, they seem to be happening everywhere. Yahoo acquires Flurry, a mobile app analytics service. Twitter acquires Madbits, a learning company that specializes in visual intelligence technology. Google acquires Emu, a mobile messaging client. Facebook acquires PrivateCore, a secure server tech company.
What is the bottom line purpose of all this? Of course, ultimately, each of these parent companies want to profit from these takeovers. But each of the above tech giants has an individual strategy for wanting these particular companies. Yahoo expects, “more effective mobile advertising solutions for brands seeking to reach their audiences and gain unique insights across desktop and mobile,” according to Senior Vice President, Scott Burke. In Twitter’s case, Madbits is expected help get more incisive information of what’s trending and create better search capabilities. Google can use Emu to enhance the ever-growing Hangouts with better messaging and to advance the reach of Google Now as that platform continues to grow. The Facebook acquisition may make the most sense of all, since Facebook is viewed by many as lacking in security and not doing enough for their user’s privacy. A Facebook spokesperson stated, “We plan to deploy PrivateCore’s groundbreaking technology into Facebook’s server stack to help further our mission to protect the people who use our service.” This would seem to be a logical and needed step in the right direction for Facebook.
All of the above make sense to me. Each move should eventually help each parent company become more profitable and/or more secure. For Yahoo, Google and Twitter the moves should give their consumers more targeted ads and better search optimizations. Facebook can only help itself with, at least a public perception of striving to make the entire ecosystem more secure.
Some acquisition attempts that we hear of either don’t make sense or are so unpopular as to just become unfeasible (the Sprint/T-Mobile bid, for example). But, others do bear fruit and sometimes give value to both the business entities involved and their customers. I’m hoping that the latter is the case in the stories mentioned above and whatever others may be coming down the pike.
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