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WebRTC Industry Mergers & Acquisitions

WebRTC landscape has changed considerably in past two years. Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) have marked the WebRTC landscape, and is showing no signs of slowing down. In 2015 we saw over $1 Billion in funding go to WebRTC related companies and over 40 mergers and acquisitions took place. Many notable companies such as Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Ericsson, Amazon, Intel, Facebook, Snapchat, Slack and Blackboard are trending on the WebRTC charts.

Some of the notable acquisitions made in 2014-15 are:

December 2015

Microsoft Acquires Talko

• On December 21, 2015 Microsoft acquired Talko, a Boston-based startup dedicated to helping workgroups (or families or other sets of associates) collaborate using their smartphones.

Interactive Intelligence Acquires Customer360

• On December 10, 2015 Interactive Intelligence, a global provider of software and cloud services for customer engagement, unified communications and collaboration acquired Customer360, a developer of Software as a Service (SaaS) applications that help businesses enhance customer relations using non-voice communications channels.

November 2015

ThinkingPhones Acquires Fuze

• On November 16, 2015 ThinkingPhones, an innovator in developing mobile-enabled, analytics-driven business communications and the fastest growing unified communications as a service (UCaaS) company globally, announced that it has acquired Fuze, the leading cloud-based video conferencing company.

Atos Acquires Unify

• On November 3, 2015 Atos, an European IT services corporation acquired Unify, business unified communication solutions company from Gores Group and Siemens.

October 2015

Porch.com Acquires Fountain

• On October 29, 2015 Porch.com, the Seattle-based online home services platform, announced that it has acquired Fountain, a service that connects Internet users with doctors, lawyers, mechanics, tech support and other experts through video chats, texts and annotated photos.

September 2015

Google Acquires Jibe Mobile

• On September 30, 2015 Google acquired Jibe Mobile, a leading provider of RCS (Rich Communication Services).

August 2015

Virtuvian Acquired Voxbone

• On August 20, 2015 Virtuvian a leading independent European private equity firm, acquired Voxbone, a cloud-based provider of international voice over internet protocol (‘VoIP’) services delivering communications solutions for enterprises worldwide.

Comverse Acquires Acision

• On August 6, 2015 Comverse, Inc. a global leader in digital services, announced that it has acquired Acision, a privately-held leader in secure mobile messaging and engagement services.

July 2015

Dropbox acquired Clementine

• On July 22, 2015 Dropbox, an american file hosting services company acquired Clementine, an enterprise communication service.

Pluralsight Acquires HackHands

• On July 9th, 2015 Pluralsight, a global leader in online training for technology professionals, announced that it has acquired San Francisco-based HackHands, an online mentoring platform for programmers.

June 2015

Jive Communications Acquires Speek

• On June 29, 2015 Jive Communications, a leading Cloud communications provider, announced that it has acquired Speek, audio and web conference service vendor.

May 2015

Cisco Acquires Tropo

• On May 29, 2015 Cisco acquired Tropo, that provides a cloud API platform that enables customers and developers to embed real-time communications within their applications.

Fuze Acquires LiveMinutes

• On May 20, 2015 Fuze, the cloud video conferencing company, announced that it has acquired LiveMinutes, an online team workspace platform.

Atlassian Acquires Hall

• On May 6, 2015 Atlassian, the company behind developer services like JIRA and Confluence, announced that it has acquired Hall, a group chat service for businesses.

April 2015

Atlassian acquired Blue Jimp & Jitsi.org

• On April 22, 2015 Atlassian, an enterprise software company that develops products for software developers, project managers, and content management acquired Blue Jimp & Jitsi.org, an open source project that includes the WebRTC Jitsi Videobridge, among other technologies.

Mitel Acquires Mavenir

• On April 29, 2015 Mitel, a global leader in business communications, announced that it has acquired Mavenir Systems, Inc., a global leader in converged IP communications for enterprises, service providers and mobile operators.

January 2015

Slack Acquires Screenhero

• On January 28, 2015 Slack, real-time messaging, archiving organization acquired Screenhero, a collaborative screen sharing application.

September 2014

Blackboard acquires Requestec

• On September 25, 2014 Blackboard, an education software services company acquired Requestec, a leading provider of Web-based Real Time Communication (WebRTC) technology.

May 2014

Snapchat Acquires AddLive

• On May 5, 2014 Snapchat, an image messaging and multimedia mobile application acquired AddLive, a WebRTC Startup.

With all these major mergers & acquisitions, there are two major players heading to join the league.

WebRTC And Its Growth In 2016

Apple & WebRTC

Apple is rolling to join the bandwagon. A group comprising Ericsson, Igalia, Centricular, and Dr. Alex Gouaillard, an independent WebRTC expert, made an initiative to bring WebRTC to WebKit. WebRTC is being added to the browser ‘Safari’. Apple is actually trying to refresh and update its Safari browser – and WebKit is the rendering engine used by Safari and is supposedly in development.

Microsoft & WebRTC

Microsoft Edge has made its step in implementation of WebRTC. It currently supports the WebRTC 1.0 API for audio applications. In order to further improve the level of WebRTC 1.0 API compatibility for basic 1:1 audio/video communications, Microsoft is now prototyping a subset of the WebRTC 1.0 API natively within the Edge Platform.

It is expected that the WebRTC market will reach $4.45 Billion by 2020, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 50.9% from 2015 to 2020. Early adopters will be the first to reap the rewards of this growth.