Rethink: Motorola acquires 280 North

Caroline Gabriel, Rethink Wireless
27 Aug 2010
00:00

The stream of acquisitions of mobile software start-ups continues, with Motorola snapping up 280 North, developer of the Cappuccino application framework.

This reflects the race by all the handset majors to acquire new skills and technologies focused on web services and apps - as seen in RIM's purchase of QNX and Nokia's series of acquisitions to boost Ovi.

As usual, financial details were not disclosed, although TechCrunch reports that Motorola paid about $20 million for its latest unit.

Cappuccino is an application development framework that claims to create web apps that look like native desktop products, and have a similar quality.

Applying this to mobile systems could give Motorola a lead in the gradual shift of usage from native to web software - one that is still slower than Google would like, because of the performance disadvantages that persist in many mobile web platforms.

Cappuccino was created by the three founders of 280 North, Francisco Tolmasky, Tom Robinson and Ross Boucher, and is now in its own open source project.

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