Qualcomm Innovation Center has acquired iSkoot Technologies Inc., a San Francisco-based start-up offering mobile optimization software. Financial terms were not disclosed.
iSkoot works with device manufacturers and U.S. mobile operators to bring popular social networks and new Internet services to mobile handsets in an intelligent manner that reduces data bandwidth usage on the network and saves battery life on phones. The company's Kalaida Platform moves data-intensive tasks through iSkoot-managed proxy servers. The proxy servers intelligently transcode and aggregate the traffic such that the actual frequency and size (number of megabytes transmitted) of data transmissions is greatly reduced. The idea is to bring the power of cloud computing to consumer mobile devices.
As past of Qualcomm, iSkoot will now focus on three areas: continued support of its current customers; integrating its offerings with Qualcomm's products; ,and developing open source data management contributions for mobile devices.
http://www.qualcomm.com
http://www.iskoot.com
- In early 2009 AT&T tapped iSkoot to develop AT&T Social Net - a free mobile app that combines access to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and customizable news feeds within a single application.
- iSkoot is headed by Mark Jacobstein (CEO), who previously served as EVP at Silicon Valley-based loopt, a social mapping startup. Before joining loopt, Jacobstein was the founding President for Digital Chocolate, a publisher of mobile games.
