Qualcomm Innovation Center, a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm, today announced it has acquired iSkoot Technologies, which specializes in the “mobilization” of Internet services such as social networks, consumer email and IM products.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
A good number of U.S. operators and device manufacturers offer iSkoot services, such as a free mobile app that aggregates access to various social networks, customizable news feeds and consumer email services within a single tool.
Check out iSkoot’s Kalaida platform product pages for more information about its technology and commercial solutions (or read our earlier post on it). Essentially, it can provide basic phones with smartphone functionalities with minimal usage cost increase.
The Kalaida platform stems from iSkoot’s acquision of Social.im (September 2008).
iSkoot Technologies is actually a newly-formed corporation that has recently received substantially all of the assets of iSkoot, a San Francisco-based service provider at the intersection of mobile and the internet that was founded back in 2005.
iSkoot will now function as a subsidiary of QuIC, Qualcomm’s subsidiary focused on enabling and optimizing open source software with Qualcomm technologies.
According to the press release, the company will focus on continued support of its current customers, integrating its offerings with Qualcomm’s products and developing open source data management contributions for mobile devices.
iSkoot had raised $32.2 million in venture capital from leading investors like Khosla Ventures and Charles River Ventures.
The company is led by Mark Jacobstein, who most recently served as the EVP at Loopt. Before joining Loopt, Jacobstein was the founding President for Digital Chocolate, one of the world’s largest publishers of mobile games.
Rob Chandhok, president of Qualcomm Innovation Center, commented on the buy thusly:
“QuIC’s acquisition of iSkoot provides us with a push data services platform, a social network aggregation solution and voice 2.0 services that dramatically strengthens our ability to continue providing the most effective mobile solutions for operators and device makers as they serve consumers worldwide.”
Sounds like a good fit, although I’d be curious to know what QuIC spent on iSkoot, exactly.
Here’s a video of AT&T’s Social Net service, powered by iSkoot:
iSkoot extends the reach of PC Calling by allowing users to make and receive PC Calls using only their regular cell phones. With iSkoot, a mobile phone user gets the power of PC Calling as part of their normal communications capabilities. iSkoot eliminates the need for special hardware, headsets, microphones, broadband connections, USB phones and even PCs, and consumers don’t have to go looking for a WiFi hot spot. iSkoot has an extended partnership with Skype. This follows iSkoot’s successful collaboration...
In July 1985, seven industry veterans came together in the den of Dr. Irwin Jacobs’ San Diego home to discuss an idea. Those visionaries—Franklin Antonio, Adelia Coffman, Andrew Cohen, Klein Gilhousen, Irwin Jacobs, Andrew Viterbi and Harvey White—decided they wanted to build “QUALity COMMunications†and outlined a plan that has evolved into one of the telecommunications industry’s greatest start-up success stories: Qualcomm Incorporated. Qualcomm started out providing contract research and development services, with limited product manufacturing, for the wireless telecommunications...
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