Skype Acquires Sonorit and Camino Networks
Skype buys talent, a little digital signal processing intellectual property, and maybe a way to differentiate themselves from or bargain with Global IP Sound. 
"The company was founded on the vision that through the application of its advanced signal processing expertise, voice communications in the next generation mobile internet could be richer and more natural sounding than any telecommunications experience available today."
– About Jonathan Christensen, Camino Networks President and CEO on the Sweetwater Partners web site
Global IP Sound sued Sonorit and Camino in December 2005 alleging violation of GIPS trade secrets, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and unfair competition. A Skype representative said the parties were in mediation so this remains an open issue.
The news release follows...
April 11, 2006 05:00 AM US Eastern TimezoneSkype Acquires Sonorit and Camino Networks
LUXEMBOURG & SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 11, 2006--Skype(TM), the global Internet communications company, today announced that it has acquired Sonorit Holding AS and its US subsidiary Camino Networks, Inc., a provider of voice technology for the Internet. The acquisition will allow Skype to add some of the leading experts in online voice engineering to its own team of technologists to help design and develop Skype for the future.
"We're excited about bringing the talented Camino Networks team to Skype," said Niklas Zennstrom, Skype CEO and co-founder. "They will add considerable expertise to our own world-class technology team."
"Camino Networks is focused on innovating for next-generation voice services," said Jonathan Christensen, President and CEO of Camino Networks, Inc. "Joining Skype gives us access to the best platform for bringing our technology to users."
Skype, an eBay company, has agreed to acquire all outstanding securities of Sonorit for approximately 700,000 shares of eBay stock. Based on the stock price as of April 10, 2006, the transaction is valued at approximately $27 million. eBay expects the acquisition to be immaterial to its full-year 2006 earnings per diluted share, as issued in connection with its first quarter earnings release on January 18, 2006.
About Sonorit
Based in San Francisco, with additional offices in Aalborg, Denmark, and Stockholm, Sweden, Sonorit, and its US subsidiary Camino Networks, is a start-up company building unique solutions for high quality speech processing, coding, and transmission for the next generation of Internet-based networks.
Comments
Bargain? Phil, Skype has released over 200 million apps to customers and paid GIPS maybe several million USD. GIPS has profited nicely from the exposure, but that doesn't preclude Skype from paying the enabler of their success.
Yes, it may be good business for Skype, but I get the sense they never appreciated the fact that GIPS made them a success to begin with.
Posted by: Rick | April 11, 2006 11:56 AM
GIPS helped Skype create a $4 billion sale, and they dump them over royalties. Please, don't do business with me Nick!
Posted by: Rick | April 11, 2006 12:41 PM
Looks like eBay loves to buy companies with all kinds of interesting liabilities...
Posted by: MuppetMaster | April 11, 2006 10:29 PM
Skype has acquired Sonorit. This is Skype / eBay move in the right direction to complete with Microsoft, Google, AOL and Yahoo, Skype core biz is voice and it cannot afford to depend on the 3rd party license, but must own the core voice technology, like Microsoft does,
· However Sonorit/Camino is too small (less then 10 people), was formed as a company just several months ago, has no shipping product, has no single customer, so this acquisition does not solve Skype technology hole yet,
· This acquisition is not to avoid paying royalties to GIPS, this is strategic Skype technology move to compete with Microsoft, Google, AOL and Yahoo, there are several clear less costy ways for Skype to stop paying royalties to GIPS,
· This acquisition validates again high market prices for software voice technology companies, like Skype itself, GIPS, Camino and SPIRIT DSP
Posted by: Valentina | April 13, 2006 09:10 AM
how will the end-users, the skype-advocates, the skype-evangelists, the believers, the business-users benefit from all this ?
Posted by: jan geirnaert / tropicaljantie | April 14, 2006 07:37 AM
Perhaps this links with Stefan Obergs claim that they want to make Skype 'better than a phone, with hifi sound'.
If they want it to be a market discriminator, then they need an in-house edge. Everyone has GIPS now...
I can't help thinking there are easier, less (expensive) risky ways to make their software more attractive. But it seems that they are going the IP route (intellectual property)
Posted by: Paul Jardine | April 16, 2006 05:53 PM