Access, based in Japan, surprised the technology and financial industries on Friday with an acquisition of PalmSource for $324.3 million. Access is best known to most for its NetFront browser available on many mobile devices.
PalmSource has been struggling since the split with the hardware division Palm in 2003. With a sale of […]

KT Corporation, Korea’s largest fixed-line telephone and high-speed internet provider, continues to invest in an attempt to transform itself into a multi-media industry group. KT Corp. has just acquired 51% of Sidus FNH. Sidus FNH is the largest filmmaker in South Korea. This follows an 8 billion won ($7.8 million) June investment in a 30 billion won movie investment fund established by Show Box, Korea’s second-largest movie distributor. Analysts also believe that KT is currently negotiating a contract with Walt Disney to distribute the company’s content through mobile channels.

Nam Joong-soo, KT’s newly appointed CEO, told reporters that “contents, handsets and networks will be converged, putting the focus on customers.’. He also said that the company will invest 10.4 trillion won ($10 billion) between now and 2010, with 7.8 trillion won being used to strengthen South Korea’s telecom infrastructure and 2.6 trillion being spent on new growth areas.

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Content companies and telecoms in Europe and North America need to keep a close eye on the consolidation and developments in the content and distribution within South Korea. For good or bad, South Korea’s increased combination of content and distribution will help accelerate the market by removing discussions over pieces of the value chain. This may not be the best for the overall market, but it is sure to provide a consumer test bed for consumers’ opinions on digital content and access technologies.

Realeyes3D has secured €7.5 million (USD 9.3 million) in venture capital. This round of funding was led by Atlas Venture and Partech International and had participation from first round investors Siemens Acceleration in Communications and I Source Gestion.

For those not familiar with Realeye3D, the company creates and implements technology related to camera phones. It is best known for Phone2Fun suite of products that allows users to send handwritten messages, postcards, and fax-quality scanned documents from a standard 1 Megapixel camera phone. In essence, the user takes a picture of any document (e.g. handwritten note, article, diagram) and the “scan” can then be sent directly or embedded in other documents, such as a greeting card with a handwritten note.

The German government has created a $320 million (262 million Euro) venture capital fund to support technology-based startups within the country. A European Commission website referenced the creation in pointing to the Partners for Innovation website this past week.

Industry analysts see the creation of the High-tech Startup Fund (High-Tech Gründerfonds) as an attempt to reform previous German federal venture capital programs begun several years ago.

Sprint Nextel announced that it will acquire two resellers of the Sprint service and bring those subscribers under the Sprint Nextel Brand. It will pay around $288 million for Gulf Coast Wireless, which has 95,000 subscribers in Louisiana and Mississippi. IWO Holdings, which has 237,000 subscribers in New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts […]

Science Applications International, based in San Diego, is the largest privately held defense contractor for scientific, engineering, systems integration and technical services to the U.S. Government and commercial markets. It has many offerings but generally focuses on security, intelligence and homeland defense.

The company also filed for a capital restructuring and will create a parent company called SAIC Inc., with its current shareholders becoming shareholders of the parent company. Given the restructuring and size of the initial offering, SAIC does not expect the IPO to finalize until 2006.

IBM recently announced the formation of a Venture Capital Advisory Council to work with IBM to encourage and aid deployment of open standards based solutions, with a focus on emerging markets. The Council “will meet throughout the year to review opportunities for startups in IBM’s partner programs”.

Initial members of the Venture Capital Advisory Council include venture capital partners at Accel Partners, Darby Overseas Investments, Ltd, Draper, Fisher and Jurvetson, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, 3i, U.S. Venture Partners, and Walden International.

Outsiders and even most within the gaming industry never hear the details of game development contracts between studios and publishers. Through a series of unfortunate events, perhaps even some misrepresentations and a lawsuit, everyone is given insight into these contracts and negotiations.

Spark Unlimited, the independent studio behind Call of Duty: Finest Hour, has filed a $10 million lawsuit against Activision accusing the publisher of breach of contract, fraud, theft of ideas and stealing of employees. Gamespot has obtained a copy of the lawsuit and is currently running a great article detailing the case.

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As this case proceeds, everyone should remember a few things:

Com2uS, a Korean based mobile games developer and publisher, has raised $8 million (US) in funding from US-based venture capital firms Storm Ventures and Walden International. This funding will be used to accelerate game development and aid marketing activities in Korea and abroad.

Com2uS currently has game offerings in 40 countries through multiple carriers such as NTT DoCoMo, China Mobile, T-Mobile and Vodafone Global.

EE Times is reporting that, Telabria, an early member of the WiMax Forum, has raised more than £1 million from private and institutional sources. The company plans to raise additional funds in the coming months and will use these funds to develop a WiMax wireless broadband network in South East England.

Nintendo announced that it would acquire 2.2 million shares of its own stock, representing 1.55 percent of the 130.08 million shares outstanding. Assuming the company acquires all 2.2. million shares at the propose $106 per share price, the purchase will cost 25.64 billion yen ($233.5 million).

Analysts believe this move is to limit any possibility of a hostile takeover. The resent “friendly” $600 million takeover bid for Taito by Square Enix is the latest combination in several years of game industry consolidation that has increased pressure on the only console manufacture to rely almost entirely on game related sales.

Scandinavian massively multiplayer game specialist FunCom has received 5 million Euro of new funding from Nordic Venture Partners.

Funcom current operations the science fiction themed MMORPG Anarchy Online, which was launched in 2001. This new funding will be used for the company’s launch of the upcoming PC-based massively multiplayer title, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures.

While the mobile game industry has seen an inflow of funding from the financial markets over the past several years, the fixed gaming industry is still largely dominated by funding from the top tier publishers. FunCom’s continued success and ability to raise capital demonstrates that the same is possible for fixed developers.

D&M, who also owns the Denon, Marantz and McIntosh brands, announced that it will no longer make Rio products after September 30th, 2005. The company cited increased competition in the mass-market portable digital audio player market.

The closing of the Rio lines, purchased from SonicBlue in early 2003, will allow D&M to focus on the more profitable premium consumer electronics brands.

Analysts are viewing this decision as a blow to companies like Microsoft, RealNetworks, Napster and other Apple rivals that operate online music services based on Microsoft and/or open standards. The exit of Rio leaves Creative Technology (maker of the Nomad and Zen music players), Samsung and a handful of other music players that operate on these other standards.

It is Monday morning and the markets are live with rumors from the weekend. The one that has jumped out first is a rumor that Palm may be buying back PalmSource.

Palm spun off PalmSource in 2003 to allow the companies to separate sales requirements, product marketing and strategy for the Palm OS and device hardware. Since then, Microsoft and Symbian have largely taken over the mobile device market. The Palm Trio has been Palm’s saving grace, but even recent comments by Palm’s CEO about being open to a non-Palm OS on a new version of the Trio raised more than a few eyes.

One could make a case either for or against a recombination of the two Palm companies, but this will be an interesting story to follow.

Mobile content/game developer and publisher Glu Mobile (formerly Sorrent, Inc. and Macrospace Ltd.) has received a $7.5 million investment from Time Warner. This follows the $20 million in follow-on venture capital funding round in May led by Granite Global Ventures, with participation from BA Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Globespan Capital Partners and Sienna […]