Google ostensibly close to buying WhatsApp for $1 billion

WhatsApp, the cross-platform instant messaging application for smartphones, is rumored to be close to negotiating a landmark acquisition deal with Google. Sources reportedly close to the negotiations claim the Internet giant is considering dropping a whopping one billion dollars on the popular service that as of March 2013 had a cool 200 million users, a hundred million ones on Android alone.

The report ties nicely with talk of a new instant messaging brand from Google called Babble, and even more so given Facebook with its new Home UI layer for select Android devices is basically encouraging its one billion users to use its Messenger service right from their Lock screen or from whichever app they happen to be using at any give moment…

DigitalTrends reports that while the deal started four or five weeks ago, “we’ve been told that WhatsApp is ‘playing hardball’ and jockeying for a higher acquisition price, which currently is ‘close to’ $1 billion right now.”

The acquisition might make sense for both parties.

For WhatsApp, Google’s scale and reach would mean rapid adoption, especially on Android devices. More importantly, the software would probably gain video chatting, a feature it’s been conspicuously missing.

WhatsApp’s 200 million users come from more than a hundred countries and across an astounding 750 mobile networks.The number one paid app in more than a hundred countries, WhatsApp on New Years Eve 2012 alone saw a record eighteen billion messages processed in a day.

DigitalTrends lets us in on WhatsApp’s business model, said to pull in about $100 million in revenue:

WhatsApp has a proven monetization scheme. Its yearly but nominal $0.99 subscription fee keeps the service ad-free. Behind the scenes however, WhatsApp also generates revenue through profitable partnerships with international telecommunications companies.

For instance WhatsApp’s monthly local plan in Hong Kong with mobile operator 3 HK costs just $8HK ($1.03 USD) and an international package will run for $48HK ($6.18 USD) per day. And whatever Whatsapp is doing is working: The app has even had a direct hand in declining SMS usage around the world. 

It’s interesting that although Google played its cards well with Android, it somehow has managed to drop the ball when it comes to the mobile instant messaging playground.

The company is now rumored to be consolidating its many instant messaging offerings under the new Babble brand so it could certainly use a standout app such as WhatsApp to drive people away from rival offerings and give them another reason to go Android.

The search giant’s Nikhyl Singhal told GigaOM last June that “we have done an incredibly poor job of servicing our users here.”

WhatsApp is thought to be toying with a subscription model on iOS and has suffered its share or privacy-related hiccups. Google previously acquired some other popular developers who made names for themselves creating popular apps for Apple’s iPhone, iPod, iPad and Mac.

Most notably, it boughtemail client Sparrow last Jul and mobile productivity suite QuickOffice in June 2012. Last September, the company unexpectedly acquired Nik Software, the maker of the popular photo editing software Snapseed.

Viber, another popular IM app, has for some time been in a neck and neck race with WhatsApp over which service gets to become the default cross-platform messaging solution on mobile devices.

But taking advantage of Viber’s feature shortages and slow pace of development, WhatsApp zoomed past its rival, which as of February 26, 2013 had 175 million users.

Which one do you prefer for cross-platform messaging, Viber or WhatsApp?

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Apple acquires indoor GPS company WiFiSLAM for $20 million

Big news out of Cupertino this evening. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple has acquired indoor mobile location positioning firm WiFiSLAM, in a deal worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 million.

Apple has confirmed the acquisition of the company, which possesses proprietary technology that allows mobile apps to detect a smartphone user’s location inside of buildings using preexisting ambient Wi-Fi signals…

The Wall Street Journal‘s Jessica Lessin reports:

“Apple has acquired indoor-GPS company WifiSLAM, a sign that the war over indoor mobile location services is heating up. Apple paid around $20 million for the Silicon Valley-based company, according to a person familiar with the matter who said the deal closed recently.

The two-year-old startup has developed ways for mobile apps to detect a phone user’s location in a building using Wi-Fi signals. It has been offering the technology to application developers for indoor mapping and new types of retail and social networking apps.”

WiFiSLAM has just a handful of employees, made up of a mix of former Google software engineers and Stanford graduates. It’s raised an unknown amount of money from angel investors, including Google’s Don Dodge.

Here’s co-founder Joseph Huang speaking about WiFiSLAM at GeoMeetup late last year.

Apple’s acquisition of the indoor positioning firm makes sense, considering that it’s trying to compete with Google in the mapping space. Google Maps currently supports indoor maps for a number of popular venues.

A company spokesman confirmed the buyout with The Journal, saying that Apple “buys smaller technology companies from time to time,” but generally doesn’t discuss its plans. And he declined to comment any further.

He’s right though, Apple has acquired a number of smaller companies in the last few years—particularly those with mapping technologies. In 2009 they acquired Placebase, and later added Poly9 and C3 Technologies.

Apple released its in-house Maps app last fall alongside iOS 6. It initially received a copious amount of criticism over the service due to data inaccuracies, but it has made a number of improvements within the last 6 months.

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Dropbox acquires email startup Mailbox

That didn’t take long. It’s only been a few months since we first heard about Mailbox, the fresh new iPhone email client. And it’s only been about about a month since it actually launched. But it looks like they’re going to be bought out.

 

 

 

Dropbox has announced this morning that it will be acquiring the Mailbox team. There’s no word on price yet, but it looks like all 13 team members will be joining Dropbox, and Mailbox will continue to operate as a standalone app…

The Wall Street Journal reports:

“We felt we could help Mailbox reach a much different audience much faster,” said Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, who said both companies shared the goal of making people’s lives easier.

He said Dropbox will keep the Mailbox service running as a stand-alone app, and over time Dropbox will also use Mailbox’s technology to enhance Dropbox features, like email attachments. The deal came together, he said, after the companies started talking about email attachments a few months ago.”

Mailbox has generated a lot of buzz since it launched last month. The app has been rolling out in phases, using a unique reservation system to control server traffic. Our very own Jeffreviewed the client, calling it “an email app that thinks different.”

Speaking with The Journal today, Orchestra CEO Gentry Underwood said Mailbox is now delivering 60 million messages a day, and has taken 1.3 million reservations. And he adds that they are still struggling to keep up with the demand from users.

Dropbox, for it’s part, isn’t doing too shabby either. The company currently has around 250 employees, and has been valued by investors at $4 billion. Rumor has it, it’s even discussed an initial public offering with bankers, but there are no imminent plans.

The Mailbox purchase is an interesting move, to be sure. And we imagine that this is good news for both companies and their respective apps.

 

 

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