Another week, another WebRTC related acquisition took place.
Since the Tropo acquisition just a month ago, we had two more acquisitions:
- Fuze acquired LiveMinutes - that at the same time it raised $20M more. Fuze itself made use of WebRTC as an access point to its video conferencing service, and LiveMinutes focused on collaboration and used WebRTC for video chat
- Broadsoft acquired mPortal - an outsourcing vendor focusing on mobile communication apps, catering large enterprises and telcos
When Atlassian acquired Jitsi I was a bit worried. We were nearing the end of April with only 3 acquisitions in 2015. With 8 acquisitions in 2014, this looked like another "boring" year. Well... we're now into the 7th acquisition of 2015 when it comes to WebRTC and we're almost 6 months in.
The chart below shows the WebRTC related acquisitions we've had since WebRTC's inception. We are growing steadily.
Most of the acquisitions this year are similar to the ones last year - they are about acquiring the market, the business models and the technology. Only two of them have been technology/acquihires (ScreenHero and Jitsi).
How will the second half if this year shape out to be? Which kind of vendors are we going to see acquired next?
This is shaping up to be a pretty interesting year for WebRTC.
