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Adobe has acquired Nitobi Software, the creator of HTML5 mobile app framework PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
PhoneGap’s open source platform allows developers to build cross-platform mobile applications with HTML5 and JavaScript, and distribute these applications to a variety of platforms. To date, PhoneGap’s open source framework has been downloaded more than 600,000 times and thousands of applications have been built using PhoneGap on Android, iOS, BlackBerry and other operating systems. The company also just launched a PhoneGap Facebook Connect plugin to allow HTML5 developers to simplify the log in process for their apps by allowing users to login with their Facebook credentials.
With PhoneGap, Adobe says it will offer will offer developers the choice of building native mobile apps using HTML5 and JavaScript with PhoneGap or using Adobe Air and Flash. As Danny Winokur, vice president and general manager, Platform, Adobe says of PhoneGap, “It’s a perfect complement to Adobe’s broad family of developer solutions, including Adobe AIR, and will allow us to continue to provide content publishers and developers with the best, cutting-edge solutions for creating innovative applications across platforms and devices.”
The acquisition is expected to close by the end of October 2011 and all of Nitobi’s employees, which are based in Canada, will join Adobe.
Considering the general trend of away from Flash-based mobile sites towards HTML5, it’s interesting to see Adobe push its HTML5 strategy. The company has been open recently about making more meaningful tools for HTML5 development, so I’m sure we can expect more of the same from Adobe in the future.
Adobe also announced today that it acquired TypeKit, which offers web designers a way to use a wide array of fonts on their websites.
Source Tech Crunch
