Acquisition Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Sparrow acquired by Google, team to work on "new projects"

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Jul 20th, 2012)

One of the nicest mail clients on any platform, Sparrow, was just acquired by Google. There's a note on Sparrow's homepage by CEO Dom Leca, which says it all. This is a great move by Google if they allow the team which built Sparrow to focus on making intuitive tools. MacStories got a statement ...

Socialcam sells to Autodesk for $60 million

by Mike Schramm (Jul 17th, 2012)

Autodesk has added yet another feather to its growing cap, buying mobile video sharing app Socialcam for a price of $60 million. Socialcam was launched only about 18 months ago, but it's been a big hit since then, attracting lots of high profile investors and a prestigious spot at the Y ...

Apple may acquire Italian digital audio editing software firm Redmatica

by Kelly Hodgkins (Jun 1st, 2012)

Speaking at the recent D10 conference, Tim Cook said Apple is still in the business of buying companies, but he doesn't want to announce these accusations acquisitions unless necessary. According to a recent Tech Crunch report, Italian startup Redmatica may be the target of one of these quiet ...

GREE picks up Funzio for $210 million

by Mike Schramm (May 2nd, 2012)

You might remember GREE as the Japanese social network that picked up OpenFeint around this time last year. Since then, the company has been, like Zynga, Mobage, and a few other giant social networks, looking to pick up social and iPhone/mobile developers to make games for its millions of users ...

Zynga-owned Draw Something finally gets update for sharing, undo

by Mike Schramm (Apr 18th, 2012)

Most of our stories about Draw Something since the game's launch have been business related. After it garnered tens of millions of users in its first few weeks, the company that makes the game, OMGPOP, was bought by Zynga for a whopping $200 million. But here's finally something to show after ...

Rovio Entertainment acquires Futuremark Games Studio

by Kelly Hodgkins (Mar 27th, 2012)

Rovio is on fire right now. Last week, it launched Angry Birds Space and logged an impressive ten million downloads in three three days. Now, the company announced it has used some of its cash to acquire benchmark software maker Futuremark Games Studio, says a report in Venture Beat. Mikael ...

Zynga acquires Draw Something dev OMGPOP for $200 million

by Mike Schramm (Mar 21st, 2012)

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how App Store fortunes are made. We've posted already about the almost overnight success of Draw Something, an app that has picked up over 30 million downloads and even beaten Zynga at its own game on Facebook. And because everyone knows that Zynga has plenty ...

Apple to acquire Chomp app search platform

by Michael Rose (Feb 23rd, 2012)

Having an App Store means never having to say "Sorry, there's no app for that" -- or at least not very often. With the massive success of the iOS App Store, however, there's also a discoverability problem: how do you find the apps you need? Searching by name or keyword doesn't always help, and ...

What's Apple going to do with $97 billion in cash?

by Kelly Hodgkins (Jan 24th, 2012)

During its earnings conference call, Apple confirmed the company is sitting on a treasure chest of US$97.6 billion. This stack of cash is steadily growing, up from $81.6 billion at the end of the September quarter. With all that money in the bank, you can't help but wonder... what's Apple going to ...

Apple confirms purchase of flash memory firm Anobit

by Kelly Hodgkins (Jan 11th, 2012)

Apple spokesperson Steve Dowling spoke to Bloomberg's Business Week and confirmed the company purchased Anobit, an Israeli-based flash memory firm. Israeli newspaper Calcalist broke the story in December, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu corroborated the news when he tweeted a ...

Walmart acquires iOS development agency Small Society

by Mike Schramm (Jan 4th, 2012)

There have been quite a few strange acquisitions in the world of iOS development lately, but I think this one takes the cake: Walmart, of all places, has picked up an iOS development house named Small Society, in order to strengthen its customers' experience on Apple's mobile devices. Small ...

Nuance to acquire rival Vlingo

by Mike Schramm (Dec 21st, 2011)

Nuance, the company behind the Dragon apps and a whole slew of other popular software suites, has decided to acquire its rival Vlingo, another voice-to-text software developer. VentureBeat says it's for an undisclosed sum, but even though the two companies have sued and counter-sued over a ...

Calcalist: Apple to buy Israeli company Anobit

by Michael Rose (Dec 20th, 2011)

As noted here & here last week, the Israeli business daily Calcalist has been tracking the story of Apple's purported buyout of the flash/DSP technology company Anobit. Today the site reports that the deal is good to go, and that Anobit's employees are being told of the new ownership. To ...

Apple reportedly buying flash memory company

by Kelly Hodgkins (Dec 13th, 2011)

According to Calcalist, Apple may acquire Israeli company Anobit for US$400 to 500 million. Anobit is a fabless semiconductor company that produces flash storage solutions for the enterprise and mobile markets. The Calcalist report claims Apple already uses Anobit's technology in its iPhone, ...

Smule acquires Khush, two music-making app companies join forces

by Mike Schramm (Dec 2nd, 2011)

Here's an interesting acquisition that completely makes sense in hindsight. Smule, the company behind popular iOS apps like Magic Piano and the original Ocarina for iPhone app, has acquired Khush, an iOS developer that also makes musical apps, including LaDiDa and Songify. These two ...