The first big acquisition in the mobile space for 2011 could very well be Skype’s alleged forthcoming purchase of video sharing service Qik.
According to various industry estimates, it could be an acquisition worth upwards of $100 million – not a small chunk of change, even for a large and growing company like Skype.
On Thursday, Business Insider quoted sources reporting that Skype will “probably” announce its acquisition of Qik as early as this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Those in the know claim the deal is already done and that Skype actually got a good deal. That is, if Qik has the type of year in 2011 that it had in 2010, a prospective 2012 acquisition could have been a whole lot more expensive for the internet phone giant.
Based on information presented on Qik’s official corporate blog, the company began 2010 with 600,000 users. By the end of 2010, that number had swelled to 5 million – an accomplishment aided in part by Qik’s partnerships with the likes of Sprint, T-Mobile, Nokia, and Samsung.
Luckily for Skype, which recently introduced video chat support for the iPhone, Qik is widely regarded as the best video streaming option for Android, Google’s hugely popular mobile OS, which is also poised for rampant growth in 2011.
