Last week, in a blog post draft gone wrong, word leaked out that Microsoft was set to buy mobile email startup Acompli. Now Microsoft has made the announcement official. The deal, said to be “north of $200 million”, will bring Acompli’s set of iOS and Android mobile email apps to the Redmond company. These apps work with Google and Microsoft’s email services.
Microsoft plans to “build on the app’s success and bring it together with work currently in progress by the Outlook team”, according to the press release, and continue the cross-platform work that’s going on across the company:
This acquisition is part of our company-wide effort to help people accomplish more with their mobile devices. This year we brought Office to the iPad and the iPhone, and we recently announced that we’re bringing Office to Android devices. These are significant steps in our work to deliver the best productivity experiences across mobile platforms, and we’re continuing to push forward.
Acompli is positioned to further the new mantra of both cross platform and productivity focus, and as Acompli says in its About page, “closing the gap between the old paradigm of desktop email and the untapped potential of what mobile email should be”.
Acompli started some 18 months ago by former Zimbra and VMWare staffers, and came to Microsoft to discuss collaboration with Office 365, which then led to the acquisition talks, according to the Acompli blog post announcing the deal.