Investment in big data and analytics (BDA) is booming, with the large number of vendors and startups in the field creating an environment ripe for acquisitions. BDA mergers and acquisitions are happening across various verticals, from transportation to healthcare and many in the arena of social media analytics. RCR Wireless looks back to the activity thus far in 2014 that is specifically related to the mobile ecosystem, and picks five deals (for which financial terms were disclosed) that illustrate some of the most significant trends across the industry.
1. Salesforce buys “relationship intelligence” company and competitor RelateIQ for about $350 million. RelateIQ puts business intelligence on an individual and real-time level, pulling information from calendars and email with its mobile app and Google Chrome extension. RelateIQ’s organizational technology flags emails, captures customer interactions and allows shared contacts to be built across a business; its purchase, Venture Beat theorizes, is reflective of a tectonic shift in enterprise software and user experience.
2. Yahoo purchased Flurry for a reported price of more than $200 million to boost its mobile advertising business. The company has a mobile advertising platform and bases its analytics from app activity on 1.4 billion devices per month, and 5.5 billion app sessions per day, according to Flurry’s stats.The purchase extends Yahoo’s capabilities for mobile app development, analytics and monetization.
3. AOL buys analytics firm Convertro for all-channel analytics for $101 million. While the previously mentioned Yahoo acquisition highlights a web company’s efforts in mobile, the Convertro purchase reflects the increasing interest in audience information, data and analytics that span multiple channels, including mobile, and allow the creation, distribution and measurement of multichannel media spending so that customers can, for example, figure out that their best-matched customers are switching from computers to mobile devices through their shopping process and be able to do user matching.
4. Anite buys Xceed, which specializes in data analysis and post-processing of information from multiple network sources, for $30 million. Xceed will be integrated into the company’s test and measurement business. This purchase is reflective of the increasing role of analytics in both monitoring and testing of wireless networks, across the Radio Access Network as well as the core.
5. Fujitsu bought the U.S firm Globeranger for an estimated price between $20 million and $30 million. The RFID and software company has a sensor-based platform for mobile and RFID information at the edge of a company’s network, and provides analytics and positioning information in real-time. This acquisition also highlights the increasing importance of “Internet of Things” (IoT) connectivity — Globeranger’s RFID information is often used for tracking purposes, and is used by customers including the U.S. Department of Defense.
