Walmart is set to make a play for your living room. The company has acquired online movie service Vudu, just over a month after rumors about a deal first surfaced.

According to The New York Times, “the two companies began informing Hollywood studios and television manufacturers of the deal on Monday.”

Those manufacturers include the likes of LG, Sanyo, Toshiba and Sharp, who have signed deals with Vudu to put its service on its television sets. Previously, Vudu (which we first covered in early 2007) required its own separate box, but the company has since shifted strategy as the trend towards Internet-enabled televisions (see our coverage of this year’s CES for many examples) continues to accelerate.

This is an interesting move for a couple of reasons. For one, as we said last month, it puts Walmart head-to-head with the likes of Netflix and Amazon. But also, Walmart is a huge retailer of televisions –- it has the ability to drive sales of Internet-connected TVs with Vudu on board. NYT speculates that one day this might enable Walmart to move further into the delivery of content and merchandise to consumers via television.

Update: Walmart has confirmed the acquisition of Vudu, writing in a statement that “”The real winner here is the customer. Combining VUDU’s unique digital technology and service with Walmart’s retail expertise and scale will provide customers with unprecedented access to home entertainment options as they migrate to a digital environment.”

They also note that Vudu will continue to develop its app platform, which already includes Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, The New York Times and The Associated Press.







[mashable]

Apple is set to announce that it has acquired Quattro Wireless for $275 million, several sources confirmed.

The announcement of the acquisition might come as soon as tomorrow, upping the ante in the mobile advertising business significantly.

Google (GOOG) recently forked over an astonishing $750 million for Silicon Valley’s AdMob, a Quattro competitor, which Apple (AAPL) had also made a bid to acquire.

Both innovative start-ups are aimed squarely at the fast-growing market to advertise on smartphones, such as Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android devices.

In fact, the search giant will unveil the Nexus One tomorrow, mobile phone powered by it Android operating system software, which Google designed and will sell on a Web site instead of via telecom companies.

Waltham, Mass.-based Quattro has raised close to $30 million from two main venture investors–Highland Capital Partners and Globespan Capital Partners. Founded several years ago, its clients include Ford (F), Disney (DIS) and the National Football League.

Competitors in the space are many still, despite these big acquisitions, including Millenial Media and Jumptap, both of which are now clearly in play to other players from telcoms to other device makers to big Internet companies.

An Apple spokesperson declined to comment to BoomTown about the deal and email inquiries to Quattro have not yet been returned.





About Quattro Wireless

Quattro Wireless is the leading global mobile advertising company, empowering advertisers and publishers to reach and engage their target audiences across mobile web, application and video platforms with unrivaled precision, transparency and ROI. Employing Q ElevationTM dynamic targeting technology to optimize every impression, the company’s ad serving, tracking and analytics platform and global network of sites and applications (many exclusive) deliver superior results. Leading companies including P&G, Ford, NetFlix, Time Inc., Visa, Disney and the NFL partner with Quattro Wireless because the company has turned the art of engaging and converting mobile audiences into a repeatable science.

[allthingsd]

Google, which is currently on one heck of a spending spree, is closing an acquisition of San Francisco based DocVerse, a service that lets users collaborate around Microsoft Office documents, we’ve heard from a source with knowledge of the deal. The purchase price is supposed to be around million.

Docverse lets users collaborate directly on Microsoft Office documents. Appjet, another recent Google Acquisition, has a related product called EtherPad, although that team is reported to be working with Google Wave and the EtherPad source code has been released to the community.

DocVerse is a product Google is likely to keep. The company was founded by Microsoft veterans Shan Sinha and Alex DeNeui. Shia drove product strategy for SharePoint and SQL Server, .6B and .0B products, respectively. DeNui ran Microsoft SQL Server’s web strategy.

With DocVerse Google will have a direct software connection to Microsoft Office, allowing users to collaborate real time on documents. Microsoft is also moving in this direction with Office 10. In effect, Microsoft is countering Google Docs with the new Office. And Google is countering that move with the acquisition of DocVerse. For more on this fight, see Imitation Isn’t Always Flattery: Microsoft Previews Google Apps Killer To Beta Testers.

DocVerse has raised just .3 million, in 2008, from Baseline Ventures, Harrison Metal Capital and Naval Ravikant.

The deal has not yet been finalized, says our source, but is past the term sheet stage.

[techcrunch]

Mobile advertising is hot, thanks to surging smartphone sales, increased traffic on the mobile web and the explosion of mobile apps. So Google’s recent $750 million acquisition of AdMob is likely to spark another round of M&A activity in the space next year.




Several mobile ad startups were swallowed in the feeding frenzy of 2007: AOL bought Third Screen Media, Yahoo picked up Actionality several months later, Microsoft bought its way onto the field with the pickup of ScreenTonic and Nokia jumped on the bandwagon with the acquisition of Enpocket. Those tie-ups were just a small sub-segment of the overall digital ad space, though, which saw more than a dozen acquisitions including big-name players such as DoubleClick and Publicis.

And there are still quite a few attractive startups that may be seen as ripe for the picking. Google and AdMob collectively account for 24 percent of the total ad revenue generated by major U.S. mobile ad networks, according to recent figures from IDC, but with an estimated $51 million in mobile ad revenue this year, Millennial Media claims an impressive 18 percent. Quattro Wireless is expected to generate $21 million to give it 7 percent of the market, IDC said, and JumpTap’s 4 percent of the market will bring in $11 million in 2009.

As to the potential suitors? Either Microsoft or Yahoo may feel compelled to snap up one of the remaining players to keep pace with Google, while a lesser player like AOL could make a bid in last-ditch attempt to become relevant in mobile.

AdMob’s lofty valuation — at roughly 10 times its worldwide revenue this year — could have set an artificially high bar, raising the price for all its rivals in the space. But mobile advertising is likely to get serious legs as the economy recovers, making the major startups even more attractive in an age where traditional advertising remains uneven. The mobile ad space may not see another buying spree like it enjoyed in 2007, but more M&A activity is surely on the way in 2010.

Reference : Google + AdMob = 24% Mobile Ad Network Share : http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=117926

[gigaom]