08.18.05
Qualcomm
Buys Elata For Mobile Content Delivery
 By
Chris Crum
Qualcomm announced that it has acquired mobile content delivery software provider
Elata for $57 million in cash. Elata is based in the United Kingdom.
This acquisition comes only a week later than Qualcomm's acquisition of wireless
broadband company Flarion, for which it paid $600 million.
"The benefits of this acquisition are threefold," said Peggy Johnson, president
of Qualcomm Internet Services. "...supporting the overall delivery of content
while maintaining backwards compatibility with operators' current devices through
open standards; strengthening our commitment to meeting the needs of operators
worldwide; and quickly bringing new value-added services to market without additional
hardware requirements." According to a press release,
By combining Elata's wireless content delivery system, the senses product, with
Qualcomm's BREW solution, operators have access to an extensive and modular offering
of wireless data solutions and services. This new unified delivery system also
allows operators with existing wireless data solutions to improve and expand upon
management, delivery and marketing of wireless content, while maintaining backwards
compatibility with their current devices through open standards interfaces.
The new unified delivery system is platform-agnostic, allowing operators to consolidate
all of their content services with support for all device platforms. Under a single
service delivery framework, a broad array of content can be unified and managed,
including ringtones, wallpapers, and BREW, Java, streaming and OMA-compliant content
- for the full range of feature phones and smartphones on operators' WCDMA ( UMTS
), GSM and CDMA2000 networks.
"Both Qualcomm and Elata share a common vision of helping operators and service
providers to advance the proliferation of feature-rich mobile content in Europe
and beyond," said Elata CEO Stephen Dunford. "We will be able to bring the benefits
of our joint technologies to worldwide markets, either by strengthening an operator's
existing service delivery offering or by helping to quickly establish a solution
that increases the choice, uptake and revenues from wireless content."
Elata software will continue to be available through Qualcomm. Full support for
the software will also continue to be available.
About the Author:
Chris is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews
for the latest ebusiness news. |
