Tether just made a big move in their market by buying up two of their competitors. Scuebydue pointed out in the forums that Tether made a big announcement today. They have acquired Mobishark and iMobimac which were their competitors. They are also promising a “few othe3r major announcements over the coming weeks. Here is what they had to say about the acquisition:
"This was definitely a strategic play, that allows us to leverage Mobishark’s wide customerbase to our product", said Tim Burke, CEO of Tether. "We are excited to have Mobishark customers join our growing community."
The announcement comes before a few other major announcements that Tether plans to unveil over the coming weeks. Be sure to watch our Twitter page and Facebook page for updates.
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Many of you may be familiar with MobiHand or some of their affiliates including our own BerryReview store. They have been facing some stiff competition from App World but it seems like they are really feeling the pain. We noticed that something has been off for the last few months especially with them moving their pay schedule to developers. Then Kyle over @BlackBerryCool heard from a large MobiHand dev, Mobile Stream, that they are owed over $150,000 by MobiHand. The dev was told by MobiHand to keep quiet because publicizing that info would mean that MobiHand would have less of a chance of paying them back. Here is exactly what Mobile Stream posted on their website:
MobiHand Inc., a Californian company, does not pay royalties for EasyTether. They owe me a huge sum of money – $163,976
Here is a detailed debt breakdown: July royalties: $50,645.70 August royalties: $69,759.51 September royalties: $43,570.81
The guys at MobiHand admitted the debt and said they were in financial difficulties. But they refused to work out a payment schedule. They still run their business, so they obviously have some money. But that money is stolen from my EasyTether royalties.
Now MobiHand has posted on their own blog about their “Financial Strain” that they claim is caused by having to compete with large companies like RIM and App World. You can tell from their post that they are looking to be acquired so that they can get a large cash infusion. Here is what they had to say:
MobiHand was founded seven years ago by software industry veterans committed to providing responsive and cost-efficient services to developers of mobile applications.
Through that entire period of time MobiHand has maintained a nearly perfect record of supporting and paying developers on a timely basis. With increased competition from very large, well-capitalized companies such as RIM and Google, in 2011 MobiHand has seen the need to invest heavily in developing new, differentiated services.
These new services combined with several new partnerships with large companies will result in revenue growth in the coming year. But developing and launching these new initiatives has created significant financial strain.
As a result, MobiHand is in the process of evaluating strategic alternatives which may result in the sale of the company to a larger, more well-capitalized partner. We expect this process to be completed before the end of this year allowing us to fulfill our obligations to all of our partners.
I am hoping that MobiHand manages to turn things around since they were pretty solid until the beginning of this year. Now they are falling behind even though they definitely have money coming in the door. I know that many of you have purchased apps through MobiHand and the BerryReview store along with many other branded stores. You might want to download and backup that information in case MobiHand is not acquired and goes under. We will keep you up to date as this develops.
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We heard before that RIM had acquired NewBay Software out of Dublin, Ireland but RIM had yet to publicly confirm it. My guess is that the financial terms were not closed beyond the agreement which is why they waited to officially mention it. Now RIM’s Alan Brenner, SVP of the BlackBerry Platform, has confirmed on the official BlackBerry Blog that NewBay is part of RIM. NewBay has also posted a similar message on their homepage www.newbay.com. Here is what RIM had to say about the acquisition:
Today we are pleased to announce that NewBay has joined Research In Motion (RIM). We’re excited that the NewBay team will be bringing their expertise in cloud-based digital content services to the BlackBerry platform.
NewBay’s LifeCache platform helps enable operators and device makers to deliver content across multiple, connected devices such as mobile phones, PCs and tablets.
If you are not already familiar with them, you can find out more about NewBay here: http://newbay.com/.
If you are a BlackBerry web developer you have probably heard of Nitobi and their open sourceHTML5 mobile phone development framework called PhoneGap. They help you package apps with HTML5 and JavaScript into cross platform mobile apps including BlackBerry. They just got a nice shot in the arm with an acquisition by Adobe. Not a bad deal if you are invested in PhoneGap as a developer.
It will be very interesting to see what comes of this as Adobe embraces HTML5 alongside Flash especially on the PlayBook which supports both. Check out the details on www.phonegap.com
RIM is on a roll with their acquisitions. The latest is the acquisition of NewBay which is a Dublin, Ireland cloud based service provider. They white label their solution LifeCache for cloud based services for storing, sharing, and organizing digital content like photos and video. NewBay has 200 of their own employees and currently has deals with T-Mobile US, Deutsche Telekom, Verizon, & AT&T.
This seems to be RIM’s answer to Apple, Google, and now Amazons cloud offerings for mobile. They even have a slick SyncDrive solution that competes with DropBox and SugarSync. It should be interesting to see how this plays out. Check out more details about NewBay at www.newbay.com.
The ongoing debate about AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile USA is a fun fight to watch. The latest salvo from Sprint, the carrier with the most to lose from this deal, tries to nip AT&T’s reasoning for the acquisition in the bud. Reuters is reporting that Sprint plans on presenting the FCC with a “Technical analysis detailing the actions AT&T could take to improve its network without acquiring T-Mobile USA.”
While I have heard from many industry experts that AT&T does a shoddy job of optimizing their network they have always claimed it is a lack of spectrum. Sprint’s solution calls for AT&T to increase its network capacity by 600% by using its current spectrum efficiently. Specifically Sprints statement said: "AT&T could increase its capacity by developing its warehoused spectrum, accelerating its 4G network buildout, and implementing a more efficient network architecture."
Its kind of funny to hear Sprint telling AT&T how to run their network especially since Sprint has outsourced their own network management. I can’t wait to see what comes out next from these companies…
