Soon after a leak revealing as much, Amazon has officially acquired Wondery, an independent podcast network that'll help the Internet retailer take on Spotify and other big competitors. The news comes only weeks after Amazon greatly expanded its podcast offerings through Music, the company's streaming service, and around a year after Spotify acquired Gimlet Media.
It has been more than a year since Google announced its intention to acquire Fitbit and it has not been a smooth ride for either company. It recently overcame one major hurdle when the European Commission finally gave its approval after much negotiations and concessions on Google's part. The deal, however, still has to be approved in the US but even if gets the FTC's and DOJ's green light, it might still face some substantial fines if it goes through the acquisition without Australia's approval.
Way back in November of 2019, Google announced its intention to purchase Fitbit for a whopping $2.1 billion. For a company as big as Google, any kind of acquisition is going to come under some pretty intense regulatory scrutiny, especially when the subject of its acquisition is a name as big as Fitbit. Fast forward 13 months later, and it looks like Google is about to get the regulatory approval it was looking for in the EU.
Although Android's and Chrome OS' open source natures allow them to be reshaped and installed on a variety of devices, Google has never really endorsed or even encouraged putting them on anything other than smartphones, tablets, Chromebooks, and a small number of boxes. Companies like Neverware have taken it upon themselves to make that happen, creating CloudReady OS, a version of Chrome OS that can be installed on a wide range of laptops, including older and unsupported Chromebooks. Now it seems that Google has acquired Neverware, opening the door to Chrome OS' greater expansion, presuming Google allows it.
Electronic Arts today announced a new deal to purchase UK developer and publisher Codemasters. Electronic Arts has reached an agreement with the Board of Codemasters to buy the company for £6.04 (around $7.98) per share, which equates to a grand total of $1.2 billion. It's a big acquisition to be sure, and with it, it seems that Electronic Arts is looking to corner the racing game market.
Uber and Joby Aviation just announced a deal that included an acquisition, "expanded partnership", and $75 million dollars. Uber will invest "a further $75 million" more than they'd previously invested in the aviation company - they'd previously invested $50 million as part of Joby's Series C financing round in the first month of 2020.
With its resources being restricted and possibly running low, it was really only a matter of time before Huawei took drastic measures to keep itself afloat. "Drastic measures" often imply layoffs, divestment, and sales, none of which look good no matter which way you look at it. Huawei is, of course, trying to point it in a positive light but it remains to be seen if Honor will survive this acquisition by a new Chinese company representing Honor's own agents and dealers.
Huawei seems to be in dire straits, enough to need to sell off parts of its business to refocus its resources. While it isn't bowing out of the smartphone business completely, sources claim that it is looking into selling a large part of its Honor smartphone business. While this might not be a shocking move, it could still end up as bad news for both Honor as well as Huawei, especially in the midst of the uncertainty of the company's future.
It just recently made a major step in unifying its messaging systems but Facebook might soon be facing pressure to break it up again. It is no secret that the US government wants to break up Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp due to the parent company's influence in social as well as political spheres and Facebook's numerous missteps in those same areas. Of course, Facebook won't be taking it sitting down and the bottom line of its defense might boil down to "it's too hard".
News about business acquisitions often makes it sound like things are over once the ink has dried. Reality is, however, far more complicated, especially when a company from one continent is acquiring a company from another continent with different laws and concerns. That is the situation that Google has found itself in when it announced it would acquiring Fitbit last year, a deal that has yet to be closed, presuming the EU gives its approval before 2020 is over.
Putting all speculation to rest, NVIDIA has finally announced that it is making an official bid to acquire Arm Limited from SoftBank. While the final say will be with regulators, this would mean that NVIDIA could soon be the owner of the intellectual property that pretty much powers the world's smartphones, cars, and many embedded devices. That does raise concerns about NVIDIA's hold on such IP and the computer graphics tech giant promises it will be business as usual as far as that licensing business goes.
That the US government under President Trump wants to ban TikTok in the country is no surprise. That it wants TikTok to sell to a US company in order to escape that ban, a deal that includes giving the US Treasury some percentage, is not a shocker either. What was rather unexpected was that Microsoft is apparently so interested in buying up the popular short-video social network that CEO Satya Nadella personally talked with government officials about it. It turns out, Twitter is another prospective buyer and it might actually be a better fit for a TikTok owner. Presuming, of course, it could even buy it.