The number of dominating
companies grows. Strong companies buy smaller ones, increasing sales and
therefore the revenue as two companies together are more valuable than two
separate ones. April continues acquisitions. Will they all have
chance of success, are they all worthwhile?
No one knows…
Velocity announced
the acquisition of Titan Technology Partners. Founded in 1998, Titan serves
Fortune 500 and midmarket organizations in North America, Europe and Asia and
maintains offices in Charlotte, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; London,
England; Pune, India; and Singapore. It’s a provider of global cloud hosting
and managed services, business process outsourcing (BPO) and consulting
services.
A Belton, Texas
based additive manufacturing service bureau Harvest Technologies entered into a definitive agreement for Stratasys acquisition - a leading global provider of 3D printing and additive manufacturing
solutions.
IBM
purchased Silverpop, which specializes in managing personally-customized Internet
promotions. Silverpop assembles profiles of individuals from social media sites, Web
usage, email and other digital signals. IBM plans to integrate Silverpop's
technologies into its own marketing services.
April
14 - Google acquires UAV maker Titan Aerospace
Google has
acquired Mexico-based drone maker Titan Aerospace - the drone startup that
makes high-flying robots which was previously scoped by Facebook as a potential
acquisition target. Google is interested in Titan Aerospace as its
solar-powered drones can fly continuously for 5 years, which makes them idea to
bring wireless internet to remote destinations, such as Africa.
Zebra
Technologies acquired Motorola's Enterprise business for US$3.45 billion in an
all-cash transaction. Illinois-headquartered Zebra has been known for its RFID
and real-time location solutions.
Twitter
has acquired Gnip, the social data provider that
has long provided access to public Twitter data, and that has deepened its
relationship with the social network over the years through a series of product
and partnership announcements. Gnip offers access to historical Twitter data,
and the full Twitter data firehose, but it also offers APIs that provide data
from other social networks including Reddit, Instagram, Tumblr, Bitly and more.
April 17 - Dropbox acquires Loom
Dropbox acquired
Loom, a popular service that offers cloud-based
photo storage. Dropbox and Loom share many of
the same ambitions, but unfortunately, the agreement also spells the end for
Loom.The company has immediately halted new signups, and the service will shut
down permanently on May 16th. Users can choose to automatically export their
photos to Dropbox — and they'll automatically receive the same amount of cloud
storage they previously had with Loom or customers can opt to receive a .zip
file containing every image they've uploaded to Loom's servers.
Facebook
acquires ProtoGeo Oy, a Finnish software company that’s most well-known for
making fitness tracker app Moves. Facebook adds another stand-alone app to its growing
stable.
