On Monday, Research In Motion announced it has acquired tinyHippos, a mobile web development firm that, according to the company, is comprised of “developers, entrepreneurs, and geeks” who are well-versed in all things mobile.
“tinyHippos are the makers of a mobile environment emulator called Ripple and have extensive experience in web and mobile widget/web development” says Tyler Lessard, VP Global Alliances & Developer Relation at RIM.
“We are extremely excited about our future at RIM and continuing to grow and support Ripple,” writes Dan Silvestru on the tinyHippos website. “This is a great step towards our goal of providing a cross-platform mobile application development and testing tool to developers worldwide. Specifically, we will be working to bring BlackBerry support to the Ripple product.”
For Research in Motion, the latest acquisition marks what could represent a sustained period of stratgic investments.
On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that RIM “is exploring investments in India, including setting up a manufacturing plant and logistics operations, as the BlackBerry smartphone maker considers expanding its operations in the world’s fastest-growing telecom market.”
In February, RIM purchased social media solutions developer Gist, a maker of “personalized social networks” tailored to the enterprise market.
