San Francisco — Computer giant Hewlett-Packard is adding to its growing arsenal of mobile business by acquiring a Seattle-based music streaming company Melodeo, which specializes in music applications and services for mobile devices, fueling speculation that the company plans to release a possible iTunes competitor in the future, in a deal rumored to be worth up to USD 30 to 35 million, the companies confirmed last weekend.
Precise terms of the deal were not disclosed, but according technology blog TechCrunch that reported the price was around $30 million.
Nevertheless, the acquisition vaults HP into the battle for mobile music services. HP may be planning to adopt Melodeo’s technology to incorporate a cloud-based music streaming service into mobile devices, after making a major push in this area by buying Palm and its primary asset, the webOS operating system, for USD1.2bn in April.
Melodeo vice president Dave Dederer confirmed the sale late last Wednesday afternoon, along with HP spokesperson Mylene Mangalindan.
Mangalindan said in a statement: “HP confirms that it has acquired Melodeo, a privately-owned company that provides cloud-based delivery systems for content across multiple devices.”
Melodeo’s primary product is “nuTsie,” an app for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Android devices, which allows users sync their phones with their iTunes libraries to stream tracks that they own from Melodeo’s servers. The company’s package also include “Effin Genius,” an app that scans a user’s iTunes library and generates play-lists that includes songs not in the user’s collection.
“HP’s acquisition of Melodeo is another example of our efforts to bring new, innovative technologies to market,” the company said in a statement.
Analysts forecast that mobile devices will become a astronomical business than PCs in coming years. HP’s acquisition of Palm is widely seen as an effort to quickly establish a mobile business and the Melodeo deal appears to provide further evidence that the firm is prepared to buy its way into this market.
“We are excited about the potential of this technology to bring the power of cloud-based delivery services to millions of customers.”
According to Mangalindan, “Melodeo is one of the only companies with technology to accumulate a consumer’s digital media, manage it in the cloud and stream it to the user on any device, along with additional streams of content. HP is always on the lookout for interesting innovative technology, especially as it develops its cloud-based offerings.”
Shown here, Melodeo’s Nutsie for Android lets users access iTunes playlists on their mobile phone. HP has acquired the company, and now could bring the service to its WebOS mobile platform. (Credit: Melodeo)
Moreover, smartphone maker HTC is thought to have also been curious about acquiring Melodeo, and was also linked to a possible Palm acquisition before HP stepped in.
However, HP could be planning to embrace Melodeo’s technology to build a standalone streaming service for a wider range of mobile operating systems. The firm, which is the largest PC-maker in the world, began shipping Omnifone’s music streaming service, Music Station, with PCs sold in Europe from January. HP already describes itself primarily as a services firm, though most of its customers are currently businesses.
HP’s acquisition of Palm is considered to have been mainly induced webOS, which is widely regarded as one of the outstanding mobile platforms and could expand well to larger devices. However, it is unclear whether HP is planning to focus on tablets after CEO Mark Hurd has said that his company did not buy Palm to be in the smartphone business.