DAT Group PLC have just announced the acquisition of Synchronica GMBH and will add the Synchronica OMA compliant DS/DM and FOTA servers to compliment DAT’s existing DMP platform which supports WindowsMobile, Symbian and Palm devices.
This is obviously a major consolidation in the Device Management and Synchronisation vendor space and enables DAT to offer end to end solutions for OTA device management, synchronisation and firmware updates.
DAT have previously be best known for Microsoft WindowsMobile device management services such as Smartphoneclub.com and WindowsMobile applications such as Tesco Pocket Shopper and SMSBuddy.
FULL PRESS RELEASE…
FDAT Group plc (“DAT” or “the Company”), a developer and licenser of mobile device management software, announces the acquisition of the entire issued share capital of Synchronica Software GmbH (“Synchronica”), a Berlin based software company which has developed and, subject to the agreement with Ergon Informatik AG (“Ergon”) referred to below, owns data synchronisation and device management software products. These products are complementary to the DAT Mobility Platform (“DMP”) and are based on an industry standard called SyncML. Synchronica’s products are already available on the market and work with OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) compliant devices.
The technology that the Company has acquired through this acquisition will accelerate significantly the development and reach of the Tabella offering and broaden the DMP technology platform. In its simplest version, Tabella (using the recently acquired SyncML technology) will be aimed at the millions of users of mid range devices who have no way of backing up their contacts. It will also help DAT to address an even larger market for active data synchronisation and device management for large mobile phone operators.
The consideration for the acquisition of Synchronica was €400,000 in cash paid on completion (31 March 2005), €100,000 in cash payable 12 months after the date of completion and the allotment to the vendors of options in respect of new Ordinary shares in DAT with a market value of €250,000. The cash consideration will be satisfied from the Company’s existing cash resources.
Agreement has also been reached for the variation of a contract between Synchronica and Ergon under which Ergon undertook to maintain and develop Synchronica’s OMA Direct Sync software products in return for a 20% revenue share. This variation agreement became effective on completion of the acquisition of Synchronica. Under the variation agreement, Ergon vests with Synchronica all current and future rights to the OMA Direct Sync products’ source codes worldwide. The variation agreement also eliminates Ergon’s historic 20% licence revenue entitlement whilst ensuring that Synchronica continues to receive a 50% share of all licence fees resulting from sales by Ergon of SyncML-DS products.
Commenting on the transactions, David Hayes, DAT’s Chief Executive, said “There is clear market demand for our DMP platform to include a SyncML capability. Synchronica brings DAT a suite of well regarded, live products which significantly extend DMP’s reach and addressable market. The acquisition will help us to address, immediately, an area of growing importance for many of the large mobile phone operators – active data synchronisation and device management. Additionally, we expect the acquisition to accelerate the development and reach of our recently announced Tabella e-mail service. There is much work now to be done to integrate these products into our software solutions.”
For further information please visit www.datgroup.com