Motorola To Acquire Location Services Provider

Mobile Football Madness: Best Apps For The Gridiron

Motorola reported Thursday that it has acquired Aloqa, a Germany-based firm that supplies location services for mobile phones. Motorola said it plans to team Aloqa with its Motoblur feature, which consolidates cell phone users' social networking apps in a single, easy-to-view interface.

News of the acquisition comes a day after Skyhook, another location firm, sued Google, charging, among other things, that Google had contacted Motorola to block Skyhook's service. While the Aloqa acquisition and the Skyhook-Google litigation are not connected, they illustrate the growing importance of location features on mobile phones.

Boasting more than 100 publishers in six countries, Aloqa bills itself as a service that proactively notifies users of "interesting places, events, music, movies, and other activities near you. Instead of having to search, you can just look at your phone and see your favorite hotspots, activities, events of interest, and recommended bargains close by."

Motorola said Aloqa will join its Motorola Mobility unit, which is slated to be spun off from Motorola in the first quarter of 2011.

"Aloqa's core technologies, user database, and specialized skills are a strong fit with our planned server-side context delivery architecture and will further enhance Motorola's Motoblur capabilities," said Christy Wyatt, VP of software and services product management for Motorola Mobility, in a statement. She added that Aloqa's location-tracking technology is expected to accelerate the release of Motorola's context-aware mobile services platform.

Motorola noted that Aloqa's location services are distributed as a mobile application for smartphone platforms including Android. Motorola has based its mobile phone effort primarily on Google's Android platform.

Financial details of the acquisition were not released; Aloqa, with offices in Munich, Germany, and Palo Alto, Calif., is privately held.

For Further Reading

Google Sued By Skyhook Over Mobile Location Technology

Motorola Drops Google Location For Skyhook

EU Approves Nokia's $8.1 Billion Acquisition Of Navteq