Snaptu, the Israel-based mobile app developer, has been acquired by Facebook. The company officially announced this in their official blog. The blogpost reads, “The acquisition is expected to close within a few weeks. We’ll have more updates on Snaptu soon, and we’ll be working hard to offer a richer and more advanced Facebook app on virtually every mobile phone. During this transition period, we expect Snaptu will continue to operate as it does today.”
The news first came from a section of the Israeli press, but was later confirmed by both the companies. There’s however no consensus regarding the amount of the deal. Some Israeli newspapers stated that Facebook bought Snaptu for approximately $60 million while according to some others, the purchase amount didn’t exceed $40 million.
Snaptu has been working for sometime to build social networking applications of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and catering them to different feature phone devices. Earlier this year, they partnered with Facebook to bring an app for feature phones and just weeks ago they brought a LinkedIn app. These apps have been appreciated from all corners as they all millions of feature phone users across the globe to enjoy smartphone like facilities on feature phones. In fact, Snaptu’s speciality lies in giving feature phone users the experience of mobile apps which have the qualities and facilities which smartphone users enjoy.
After its inception in 2007, Snaptu had undergone a very swift growth. Though in a nascent phase, the company already received $6 million funding from some venture capital firms. Throughout 2010, the company was in the process of developing social media apps. Facebook must have considered these details before making the procurement. Snaptu’s engineering and product team will thrive further if they work under such a phenomenal company as Facebook. It will serve Facebook’s interest as well.
The statement from Facebook mentioned, “Snaptu is a startup run by a highly innovative collection of engineers and entrepreneurs, who we already work closely with to offer a Facebook mobile application for feature phones.” Snaptu also spoke in the same tone, “We soon decided that working as part of the Facebook team offered the best opportunity to keep accelerating the pace of our product development.”
Facebook has acquired three other companies in this year — Rel8tion, Pursuit and Beluga. Snaptu is the fourth acquisition. However, the difference isn’t just a quantitative, rather a qualitative one, because with this acquisition, Facebook will be omnipresent in feature phone market. The social network earlier announced that it wants to facilitate its 250 million users, who access the site via mobile devices. With Snaptu’s acquisition, it seems Facebook is ardent enough to keep its promise.
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[...] an app for feature phones, earlier this year, in association with Snaptu and later went on to acquire the feature phone app developer in March. The launch of the new app seems to be a rollout of that [...]