Microsoft buys Mojang

Gaming is a top activity snapping devices, from PCs and consoles to tablets and mobiles, with billions of hours spent each year. Microsoft has recently announced the purchase of Mojang. Microsoft is continuing to spend its overseas cash with its acquisition of Minecraft creator Mojang for $2.5 Billion. Games and gaming as one of the Microsoft’s biggest “digital life” categories in which the company planned to continue to invest.

Since the start of 2014, Microsoft has acquired six companies, including Mojang. Of these six companies, four were headquartered outside the U.S. Mojang founders, Notch, Carl, and Jakob, are leaving the company. Minecraft, a construction game in which the players can build nearly anything imaginable, block by block, in a digital, Lego like world has spread like wildfire since its full release by developer Mojang in 2011. Minecraft is the top paid for app on both Apple Inc’s iOS and Google’s Inc Android systems and helped Mojang.

Microsoft has spent lavishly in the Nordic region in recent years, buying the handset business of Nokia for US $7.2 Billion in a deal, which closed this year. In 2011, it spent US $8.5 Billion on Skype, which has its roots in Scandinavia and Baltics. This was Microsoft’s sixth purchase this year. Microsoft is eyeing to capture the gaming and OS market. Development of Windows phones and eye-catching games will increase their market share. Let us look at Microsoft other purchases so far this year. Microsoft bought Parature in January 2014. It is a Herndon, Virginia based customer-case service provider, to bolster its Dynamics CRM line up.

In March 2014, Microsoft buys the Osterhout Design Group. However, they did not buy the entire Group, but may have bought $150 Million worth of wearable intellectual property from the San Francisco Company. In May 2014, Microsoft bought New Zealand based GreenButton, to integrate its technology into Azure to help manage computes intensive workloads in the cloud. In May 2014, Microsoft bought Capptain, a cross platform French mobile analytics vendor, and plans to integrate its technology with Azure for mobile-app dev.

In July 2014, Microsoft bought SyntaxTree, the French company behind the cross platform UnityVS game-development plug-in for Visual Studio. In July 2014, Microsoft bought InMage, a San Jose based disaster recovery vendor, to integrate its cross platform recovery/cloud continuity technology into Azure. According to news, Microsoft is planning to buy another non-U.S. based company by the end of this year. Microsoft is also working to purchase Israeli cyber security startup Aorato. Aorato is focused on improving the security IT infrastructure, including that of Microsoft’s Active Directory Technology.