Phone.com Inc, the vendor of software for connecting wireless phones to the internet, announced a $284m stock-based deal to acquire Redwood Shores, California-based At Motion Inc yesterday, garnering itself voice-activated browser capabilities.
Phone.com will exchange 2.25 million of its shares for privately- owned At Motion, whose software enables e-mail, phone messages and other services to be accessed via voice prompts. Wireless data services are expected to register 36 million US users by 2003, compared with 3 million this year, according to projections from Dataquest, the market research unit of industry analyst Gartner Group. Worldwide, there are expected to be 1 billion mobile phones in use by 2003.
Alan Black, Phone.com’s chief financial officer, said that the location of At Motion’s software in the network operator’s systems enables any phone to access the software’s functionality without modification. The service is expected to be sold from the middle of next year. Any internet site in the world can be voice-enabled, to that you’ll be able to access data on those sites from phones that have the technology, Black said yesterday. The UK’s third-largest cellular operator, Orange Plc, saw average minutes of use per customer rise four-fold after it installed voice activation software from Wildfire Communications Inc in its network.
The deal, which will see At Motion’s 40 employees transfer to Phone.com in nearby Redwood City, California, is expected to be closed by April 2000. Phone.com has licensed its software to 47 wireless network operators and more than 25 phone manufacturers worldwide.
