SHAPE Services Acquires Developer Of 'fone', To Release IM+ Video App

Exclusive – SHAPE Services, the company behind the immensely popular, cross-platform IM+ messaging applications (and then some), has agreed to acquire CrispApp, the Hong Kong based developer of the fone app for iOS (iTunes link). Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but we’ve poked around and learned that the purchase price was approximately $200,000.

As a result of the acquisition (and the partnership agreement between SHAPE and CrisApp, which was forged prior to this deal), SHAPE says it will soon launch a stand-alone iPhone application called IM+ Video – expect it to hit the App Store within the next 10 days.

IM+ Video will be a mobile video chat application for Facebook, enabling users to chat from mobile to mobile, mobile to desktop and the other way around, free of charge.

Basically, it will be the fone voice chat app combined with CrispApp’s video technology. The fone app will, however, not be removed from the App Store, though, SHAPE Services CEO Igor Berezovsky tells me.

I spoke to Berezovsky earlier this morning, and asked him how things are going for SHAPE. Very well, apparently: the bootstrapped company has been profitable since 2002 – Berezovsky jokes that that was 5 years before Steve Jobs made the word “app” popular.

There are currently roughly 12.5 million registered IM+ users, and SHAPE’s system process about 1.7 billion messages and 750 million ad impressions per month.

This isn’t the first acquisition by SHAPE Services. Back in 2008, the company acquired mobile app developer Warelex for $2.4 million.