latest
Take-Two Interactive officially buys Zynga in massive gaming deal
The purchase is complete — the gaming industry shrinks further
This past January, Take-Two Interactive announced a partnership with Zynga (of FarmVille fame), where Take-Two would purchase Zynga at a $12.7 billion valuation. At the time, the deal was still in motion, one of the largest in the gaming industry, and as of Monday, Take-Two has announced the completion of its combination with Zynga, where Zynga stockholders received $3.50 in cash and 0.0406 shares of Take-Two common stock per share of Zynga common stock.
Sony acquires Bungie for $3.6 billion in the latest gaming industry buyout
Who's excited for even less competition in the industry?
Sony's answer to Microsoft's buyout of Activision is all over the news today, and it's almost unbelievable. Sony has purchased Bungie, the creators of the Halo series, and the current team behind Destiny 2. What's really amusing is that Microsoft used to own Bungie, having acquired the studio in 2000, with Bungie going independent in 2007. Then Bungie signed a ten-year deal with Activision in 2010, but the studio ended its partnership with Activision in 2019. Bungie has since been going it solo, but today's news indeed means Bungie will now be joining with Sony after the $3.6 billion acquisition closes.
Microsoft announces plans to acquire Activision Blizzard for a whopping $68.7 billion
Potentially placing Microsoft as the third-largest gaming company behind Sony and Tencent
At this point, it's no secret that Activision Blizzard has been entangled in a seemingly never-ending series of trouble, ranging from a state lawsuit derived from employee misconduct and abuses to the CEO hiding the number of firings as part of the fallout of the company's widespread misconduct. And this doesn't even touch upon Blizzard's screw-ups, like the cringe-worthy announcement for Diablo Immortal (still not out four years later) or the absolute failure of Warcraft III: Reforged. This is where Microsoft sweeps in with a buyout offer for Activision Blizzard, and it's a whopping $68.7 billion all-cash offer, outclassing Microsoft's purchase of ZeniMax Media by almost 60 billion (to put things into perspective). So far, it sounds like the acquisition will go through, which will make Microsoft the third-largest gaming company behind Sony and Tencent.
Pandora has largely been overshadowed by Spotify in the world of music streaming, but it's still alive and kicking. Back in August, Pandora Premium support was finally added to Google Assistant, and T-Mobile began giving customers a year of Pandora Plus. Now the company has been acquired in an all-stock transaction by SiriusXM, valued at approximately $3.5 billion.
Despite being de facto leader of processors for desktops and laptops, Intel never made a large impression in the smartphone SoC market. The company spent around billion attempting to compete with Qualcomm and other companies, but ultimately gave up in 2016. According to The Wall Street Journal, Intel is reportedly looking into purchasing Broadcom, assuming Broadcom's hostile takeover of Qualcomm works out.
Last week, a report from TechCrunch claimed that Apple was about to buy Shazam for an unknown amount. For the unacquainted, Shazam is a music-detection app, but the company behind it has been looking into AR and other technologies Apple could be interested in. The buyout has now been confirmed by Apple in a public announcement.
Shazam was one of the first third-party applications available on the iPhone, as it launched in 2008 alongside the iOS App Store. Later that year, it arrived on Android, and it has continued to maintain a strong userbase. According to a report from TechCrunch, Apple could be looking to buy Shazam as soon as Monday.
Those of you who like to root and mod your phones have probably heard of JRummy Apps. Probably best known for its Root Browser and ROM Toolbox apps, JRummy has been a staple of the Android enthusiast community for many years now. It's now been purchased by a company that specializes in app acquisitions called Maple Media.
United States carriers are spending big bucks to acquire more wireless spectrum, especially with 5G on the horizon. T-Mobile recently won a bidding war for a large chunk of the 600Mhz spectrum, and AT&T was preparing to buy Straight Path Commutations last month. However, it turns out that Verizon will be buying Straight Path instead, after winning a bidding war against AT&T.
According to The Verge, LeEco has just announced that it no longer intends to buy US television maker Vizio.
Read update
Opera Software has been synonymous with fast browsers and data compression for years now. But despite improving its applications and releasing new ones like Opera Max, the company has been struggling financially and looking for a buyer since 2015. It seems that the search is about to be over as a Chinese Consortium has offered to buy Opera for $1.2 Billion.
When big companies buy small companies, there's always a chance that the smaller company will more or less disappear, along with its products. Some good examples in the mobile space would be HP's acquisition of Palm or Microsoft's similar purchase of Nokia. Not all tech companies do this - Amazon and Facebook seem to be pretty hands-off with their acquisitions - but Intel certainly does. Less than a year after Intel acquired the company that makes popular password manager PasswordBox, the company announced via its blog that the product will be abandoned sometime in 2016.
Shortly after confirming the rumors of its talks with Alcatel-Lucent yesterday, Nokia has announced today that it does indeed intend to buy the French firm. The deal would combine both European companies' assets under the Nokia Corporation name, with headquarters in Helsinki and a strong presence in France. No cash transactions would be involved, instead the acquisition is a public exchange offer whereby 0.55 Nokia shares are offered for every Alcatel-Lucent share. The valued total amounts to 15,6 Billion Euros.
When gigantic multinational corporations buy one another, the process is a bit more complicated than grabbing a new couch off of Craigslist. Lenovo announced its intention to buy American phone manufacturer Motorola off of Google back in January of this year, less than two years after Google itself acquired the then-independent Motorola Mobility. Today the sale is final and approved by all necessary regulatory agencies, with a combined price of $2.91 billion in cash, credit, and stock.
Wall Street Journal: Microsoft Is Ready To Buy Minecraft Developer Mojang For $2 Billion (Or 2 Instagrams)
Microsoft is prepared to purchase Mojang.
It's estimated that the build-your-own-adventure sleeper hit Minecraft has sold over 50 million copies on various gaming platforms, including more than 5 million of the Pocket Edition on Android. How much would you say that Mojang, the Swedish developer co-founded by Markus "Notch" Persson, is worth? If a recent report from the Wall Street Journal is to be believed, Mojang and its properties are being acquired for a staggering two billion dollars by Microsoft.
The partnership between HTC and the Beats By Dr. Dre company has been one of the more visible aspects of the former's branding over the last three years. Ever since HTC bought 50.1% of the company for an estimated $300 million in 2011, the headphone maker's iconic logo has had a reserved spot on both devices and software. But according to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Beats is looking to end the relationship in order to find a new partner for greater expansion.
On today's episode of All My Mergers And Acquisitions, the long-running Sprint bidding war between Dish Network and Japanese carrier SoftBank appears to be over, at least for the moment. After SoftBank increased its Sprint bid to 21.6 billion dollars for 78% of the company last week, and Sprint subsequently sued both Dish and Clearwire for getting in the way of its corporate matchmaking, Dish has withdrawn its offer. According to Reuters, the company stated that submitting a new offer by today's deadline was not practical.
In Case This Carrier Buyout Nonsense Wasn't Ridiculous Enough, Verizon Also Wants To Buy Clearwire's Spectrum For $1.5B
We just got done breaking down the proposed Dish-led acquisition of Sprint which is in no small part about gaining control of Clearwire's sweet, sweet
We just got done breaking down the proposed Dish-led acquisition of Sprint which is in no small part about gaining control of Clearwire's sweet, sweet spectrum. Now we're hearing that Verizon is reportedly also throwing its bid in, but not to buy any of the companies involved. Just to gut their ability to function as wireless carriers by gobbling up spectrum.
DISH Proposes Alternative Sprint Buyout Plan, Is Not So Secretly Gunning For Clearwire Holdings
Sprint is currently in the midst of a buyout with Japanese company SoftBank that would give the foreign telecom control of not only the Now Network, but
Sprint is currently in the midst of a buyout with Japanese company SoftBank that would give the foreign telecom control of not only the Now Network, but Clearwire as well, and infuse the company with some much-needed cash. Dish Network, however, hopes to derail these plans with a bid of its own, offering more cash than Softbank has on the table, as well as synergy with its existing television and and broadband packages.
We've been seeing leak after leak about Google's rumored unified messaging service. Now, as more details get seemingly confirmed and and we even get a look at the possibly near-finished app, clearly this is the time for Google to acquire a competing IM service, right? Well, not so much, according to AllThingsD. As it turns out, Mountain View is not about to buy WhatsApp, a company that makes a product that Google is currently nearly done building itself. Just in case you were wondering.