As the mobile is getting opened up by platforms such as android and iphone mobile advertising is seeing a huge growth. Apple counters Google with $275 acquisition of Quattro Wireless, mobile advertising company. Google recently purchased admob for a whopping $750M snatching it away from Apple at the last minute.
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.
What will MS and Yahoo do? Greg Sterling of Search Engine Land sees more acquisitions coming.
Yahoo already is a top mobile ad network and so is Microsoft — in both traffic and estimated revenues. Both rank in the top five in terms of monthly uniques, according to various sources.
In 2007 Microsoft acquired Screen Tonic (mainly for technology) and, last year, committed an estimated $500-$600 million in revenue guarantees to be the search and display ads partner for US carrier Verizon (89 million subscribers). Microsoft’s mobile MSN has 25 million (or more) users.
While Yahoo probably should further expand its reach and buy a mobile display ad network there’s a strong possibility that it will not, perhaps believing that it has all the reach and mobile display assets it needs already. But a technology or platform buy might be in order. The company recently lost a dynamic display (PC + mobile) ads technology partner in Teracent, when Google bought that company too.
Another possibility for Yahoo might be Mobclix, which operates one of just a few of nascent mobile ad exchanges. It could become the mobile companion to the PC-based Yahoo RightMedia Exchange.
Microsoft, for its part, will probably buy one of the remaining tier one mobile ad networks in the near term. That probably means Millennial Media or JumpTap. But there are a number of other platform, tool providers and so on that might be candidates as well.
While it will take a few years for big mobile ad revenues to show up and justify these prices, rest assured that the mobile internet will only continue to gain adoption. With 70 million users in the US today, poised to pass 100 million at some point this year, this market is real — and red hot.
Mobile is the next frontier where the biggest battles are being waged. We ain’t seen nothing yet.