Andy Miller, Vice President, Mobile Advertising at Apple has confirmed in a New Year message on the Quattro Wireless web site that Apple has acquired Quattro.
Earlier reports attributed a leak to All Things Digital, part of the same group as the Wall Street Journal, that Apple had swooped to purchase Quattro Wireless, spending $275 million in the process to get its hands on a fledgling mobile advertising network.
The move is being seen as a direct result of the November deal where Google beat Apple to purchase AdMob, paying $750 million for the company that is considered the market leader in advertising on the handset.
Quattro is a three year old VC funded business which has raised around $30 million and focuses on giving existing major brands the opportunity to advertise within applications or on the web pages or within video viewed on a mobile phone. It claims to reach mobile users extremely precisely using its Q Elevation dynamic targeting technology. It works with programming like the NFL, CBS News and Univision, and boasts Ford, Proctor and Gamble, NetFlix, Viacom, BP, Disney, Visa, and Microsoft among its customers.
Apple right now has a colossal cash and securities mountain (over $33 billion) and could have spent extra for the AdMob deal had it chosen to, but clearly thinks that what it needs in mobile advertising is a framework to get it off the ground ‘ suggesting that most of what it does with Quattro will be around keeping Google at bay with an advertising alternative, rather than buying market share. It will have the perfect relationship with its own App Store customers to suggest advertising as an extra revenue, as it signs up new developers, but so will Google on Android Market, and rapidly these two giants will begin to face off on mobile advertising. Nokia also has its own advertising eco-system around its Enpocket acquisition it made in 2008 and will bring that to bear on Symbian phones and Ovi applications, which could reach 300 million phones, all of which leaves little room for Microsoft in mobile advertising, unless it is in partnership with Nokia.