Furthering a week already teeming with significant acquisition news, Adobe Systems Incorporated has just revealed at its MAX 2011 technology conference that the software giant is acquiring Nitobi Software, a private firm known primarily as the creator of PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build.
PhoneGap is a popular open source platform for building cross-platform mobile applications with HTML5 and JavaScript.
According to the formal announcement from Adobe, with PhoneGap, Adobe will “offer developers the choice of two powerful solutions for cross-platform development of native mobile apps, one using HTML5 and JavaScript with PhoneGap and the other using Adobe Flash with Adobe AIR.
Financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close before the end of October, were not immediately disclosed.
PhoneGap’s open source framework has been downloaded more than 600,000 times to date and thousands of applications built using PhoneGap are available in mobile app stores that span devices based on Android, iOS, BlackBerry and other operating systems.
“PhoneGap has proven to be an industry-defining app solution for HTML5 developers,” says Danny Winokur, an executive with Adobe. “PhoneGap is a fantastic solution for developing a broad range of mobile apps using the latest Web standards, and is already integrated with Dreamweaver CS5.5. It’s a perfect complement to Adobe’s broad family of developer solutions, including Adobe AIR, and will allow us to continue to provide content publishers and developers with the best, cutting-edge solutions for creating innovative applications across platforms and devices.”
And it sounds like the team at Nitobi is just as excited.
“Adobe has always been a big supporter of the open source community and at the forefront of enabling rich, Web based applications across screens,” says Andre Charland, Nitobi CEO. “We share the same philosophy about enabling extraordinary mobile and Web applications. Becoming part of the Adobe family with its industry-leading tools and technologies opens up amazing new opportunities for PhoneGap and our customers.”
