Facebook means business when it comes to mobile – the company is spending an estimated $85 million to acquire Parse – that’s a hot startup that manages mobile for businesses.
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Today’s Mobile Minute:
- Parse manages iTunes apps for The Food Network, The Travel Channel, Cadillac, and Sesame Street among others. It also provides server maintenance for independent app developers – about 60,000 of them so far.
Facebook of course has been working hard to win more mobile traffic, so courting app developers is a logical move for the company. Facebook says it will make Parse part of Facebook Platform, and that it wants to enable developers to rapidly build apps that work on different operating systems and devices. - In other news, Clearwire lost $227 million dollars in the first quarter, and it has about $800 million in cash on its balance sheet. the cash on its balance sheet is down about 45% from this time last year – that’s despite $160 million in convertible loans the company has taken from Sprint. Sprint, of course, is trying to buy the 49% of Clearwire that it doesn’t already own. Sprint wants to use cash from Softbank, which is trying to buy Sprint. But it’s more complicated than that, because Dish Network is trying to buy both Sprint and Clearwire.
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Other top stories for today:
Report: Verizon mulls $100B offer for control of Verizon Wireless
Qualcomm beats expectations, but warns of slower Q3
MetroPCS posts flat Q1 results as merger with T-Mobile USA on the horizon
