Amp'd Mobile acquires NINJA Mobile's mobile development division

Mobile Internet, The, August, 2005

Amp'd Mobile announced its acquisition of NINJA Mobile's development division, which will become a part of Amp'd Mobile while NINJA focuses on expanding its mobile publishing business.

The acquisition includes NINJA's esteemed United States and Japanese development teams and NINJA's "Rope Platform" technology. NINJA's Rope Platform is the base upon which the Amp'd community, blogging, dating, commerce, multiplayer gaming, location-based, and additional server-driven applications, are being built.

Prior to the deal, NINJA has been a core partner for the technical development of Amp'd Mobile's proprietary user interface (UI) and custom applications based on Qualcomm's BREW(R) 3. 1. Since Amp'd will focus exclusively on 3G content and EV-DO, the company needed to create a new user interface to take full advantage of the wealth of unique music, lifestyle, entertainment, sports, and gaming content that will be available. Now part of the Amp'd team, the NINJA development group, led by Kiyoto Hirai, NINJA co-founder and former CEO, will focus on producing more original and proprietary BREW(R)applications at Amp'd as the company gears up for launch later this year. NINJA Mobile is now a mobile publisher and content aggregator and will continue to be led by Jeff Capdeville, co-founder and president. NINJA Mobile will remain a trusted developer and publisher for Amp'd Mobile, who will continue to outsource aspects of custom-developed applications to NINJA.

"I founded Amp'd Mobile to truly take advantage of the entertainment experience 3G can provide in the U. S.," said Peter Adderton, CEO and founder, Amp'd Mobile. "When starting the company it became apparent that we'd need to create our own user interface since what we're doing is so different. We're excited to have the team that helped create our UI on board with us full-time now and we look forward to continuing to push forward toward completion of our groundbreaking UI experience for consumers." "Amp'd Mobile represents one of the most exciting opportunities in the wireless industry today," said Kiyoto Hirai, former NINJA CEO and current senior director, BREW services, Amp'd Mobile. "My team in the U. S. and Japan has been working with Amp'd for the last year and we look forward to continuing to add a differentiating and compelling layer of custom BREW apps to ensure Amp'd is always a step ahead of the competition." "Personally, after working with this development team at NINJA--led by Kiyoto--over the past two years at two different companies, I know how they have raised the bar in terms of BREW development," said Seth Cummings, vice president of wireless content and Internet services, Amp'd Mobile. "Their Japanese team becomes experienced with the next-generation of BREW months before the U. S. and will help us maintain a competitive edge with cutting-edge features and applications."