Microsoft has agreed to acquire online telecom company Skype for $8.5 billion.
The two companies hope to complete the deal by the end of the year, subject to regulatory clearance. Skype will become a new business division within Microsoft, led by current Skype CEO Tony Bates who'll become President of the Microsoft Skype Division.
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Rovio, the Finnish company that created the Angry Birds series of games, has acquired a $42 million investment. The funding round was led by venture capital firms Accel Partners and Atomico Ventures with participation from the Felicis Ventures fund as well.
As part of the deal, Niklas Zennström of Atomico Ventures - the man who co-founded Skype, Kazaa and Rdio - will be joining the board of Rovio.
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Mobile video sharing service Qik, which recently announced it had 5 million worldwide users, is to be acquired by Skype. The transaction is expected to be completed later this month.
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Happy New Year!
Iain, James and Mark are back with the first edition of The Fonecast for 2011. There’s a look at the top industry stories from the past couple of weeks, covering Skype, The Carphone Warehouse, GSM hacking, the Rise of the Machines (or, more specifically, machine-to-machine connections) and plenty more.
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Skype CIO Lars Rabbe has published a blog post detailing the problems that affected the company’s VoIP service for around 24 hours from 4pm on Wednesday 22nd December.
Skype has also announced the new version of its iPhone application, which adds the option of video calling over 3G and WiFi networks.
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