Motorola buys Good Technology — to compete with Blackberry
(Updated with confirmation that Kleiner and others made money)
Motorola will buy Santa Clara wireless messaging company Good Technology for an undisclosed amount, in an effort to compete for big business clients.
Research In Motion’s Blackberry has dominated the corporate mobile email market, and Motorola’s Q device has failed to make significant traction. Moreover, Motorola’s rival, Nokia, bought mobile email provider Intellisync in February.
The market for wireless email has been brutal, with players like Visto, of Redwood City and NTP, the Virginia-based patent-holding company, filing suit against others and extracting large licensing fees. NTP forced RIM to pay a $612.5 million settlement. While Good has licensed technology from NTP, it is still the subject of a lawsuit from Visto, which itself has raised fresh cash even while losing money.
That competition and costly legal battles most likely pressured Good to sell, though it’s unknown whether all investors made money from the deal. Investors Kleiner Perkins, BA Ventures, Crosslink Capital and several other firms collectively invested more than $200 million into the company. (Update: We since confirmed that Kleiner, at least, made money from the deal.)
Here’s the Mercury News story about the deal, which shows there is disagreement about how well Good is doing. Here is Good’s annoucement on the deal.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
