Cutting Edge Software, developer of the popular QuickOffice suite for Palm OS handhelds, has been acquired by Mobility Electronics.
The Nasdaq-listed company manufacturers a range of mobility products, including its recently announced Pitch presentations solution for Palm m500 series handhelds. It hopes to combine QuickOffice’s word processing, charting, spreadsheet and group collaboration capabilities with Pitch and market the bundled solution through its strong retail channels. Cutting Edge Software, which is privately held, has been profitable for some time and reported around $400,000 in revenue for the last quarter. Mobility will pay $3m in cash and shares for the company.
“This transaction reflects our continued efforts to increase our presence in the rapidly growing handheld computing device market, and firmly positions us to be a leader in providing solutions for the emerging combination cell phone/PDA device category,” said Holmes Lundt, Executive Vice President of Mobility Electronics’ handheld computing device business line. “Even excluding the incremental growth we expect to generate through the combination of our two companies, Cutting Edge Software’s current level of revenue and earnings alone makes this transaction beneficial for our stockholders. Once the additional opportunities that we believe are available to us are factored in, this transaction has significant upside and gives us even greater confidence in our growth expectations for the second half of 2002 and beyond.” Jeff Musa, Founder and President of Cutting Edge Software, Inc., added: “We are extremely pleased to join forces with a rapidly emerging company like Mobility that can help advance our unique product line. We believe that the continued proliferation of PDAs as well as the emergence of hybrid cell phone/PDA devices serves as a strong catalyst for increasing the demand for our software suite and the Mobility products that will feature it. Mobility’s distribution channels will help us reach markets that were previously untapped, and we look forward to generating significant growth in our product line and Mobility’s other innovative handheld solutions.”