Tag Archives: purchase

General

Facebook Buys Whatsapp For $19 Billion

Whatsapp-facebook

Holy wow! This is by far the most amazing deal of the year. Facebook just announced the acquisition of mobile messaging app WhatsApp for $19 billion. As a matter of fact it is much more than that, as the regulatory filing states. The popular app, which was founded by ex-Yahoo employees in 2009, has already raised about $60 million in funding and has more than 430 million monthly active users. Damn, that’s a lot! The deal includes $12bn in FB stock, $4bn cash, $3bn RSUs and a $1bn break-up clause, which brings the overall payout to roughly $19 billion in total.

Basically, there are no ads, no games, no stickers and no other gimmicks inside the app. In addition,  the text messenger phenomenon is offered for a free download and after one year of free use, the service costs $1 per year. So what’s going to happen now?

In a recent blog post WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum said the following:

Almost five years ago we started WhatsApp with a simple mission: building a cool product used globally by everybody. Nothing else mattered to us.

Today we are announcing a partnership with Facebook that will allow us to continue on that simple mission. Doing this will give WhatsApp the flexibility to grow and expand, while giving me, Brian, and the rest of our team more time to focus on building a communications service that’s as fast, affordable and personal as possible.

Here’s what will change for you, our users: nothing.

And here’s Mark Zuckerberg’s official statement about the deal:

Post by Mark Zuckerberg.
tablets

Motorola Xoom Officially Live On Verizon (Update: Also in Germany and The UK)

For the last few months we have been talking and writing a lot about the Motorola Xoom, and now it’s all official at Verizon, available for grabbing for $799.99 off-contract sans Adobe flash support, or $599.99 with a two-year commitment package. The 1GHz dual-core-powered device which packs Google’s latest and greatest Android Honeycomb platform will be available on Best Buy’s shelves later today, but the 4G LTE feature, which many of you are probably waiting for, will show up for an update in 3 months or so, free of charge. The bad news is that we’re still required to pay considerable amount of money for an off contract slate, but the good ones are that Motorola has changed its WiFi lockdown policy, and customers who are willing to pay 800 bucks for the tablet, will now no longer need to register for a one month Verizon data plan (additional $20). Thank god!

Update: UK retailer PC World has just listed the 10.1-inch Honeycomb-powered Motorola Xoom for online pre-order, with 10% off at checkout compared to the $800 price we’ve already seen Stateside. That means the Brits will have to shell out only £580, which are roughly about $980, in order to get the Tegra 2 Xoom device, with 32GB of storage, sans 3G connectivity, or £480 (about $785) for the WiFi only version. Meanwhile, German’s biggest telecom company T-Mobile, has published its own 3G-enabled Xoom pricing, which stands at €699.95 – starting mid-late April. Full PR after the break.

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