Skype announced today that it has entered an agreement to acquire Qik. The price has yet to be announced, but rumor has it that it’s about $100 million.
What Qik does is let people capture video instantly from their phones. It’s already available on over 200 different phones running Android, iOS, Symbian, BlackBerry OS, and Windows Mobile. On many of them, Qik comes preloaded.
"Qik complements a lot of what we’ve been doing in terms of video, realtime services, by allowing you to capture these moments," said Skype CEO Tony Bates. "Qik’s engineering talent and product suite really complements what we’ve been doing here at Skype. We think there’s tremendous synergies between the teams both in terms of engineering excellence, but also in terms of great cultural fit."
"Skype and Qik share a common purpose of enriching communications with video, and the acquisition of Qik will help to accelerate our leadership in video by adding recording, sharing and storing capabilities to our product portfolio," Bates said. "Through this acquisition, we’ll also be able to take advantage of the engineering expertise that is behind Qik’s Smart Streaming technology, which optimizes video transmission over wireless networks."
Qik’s userbase jumped from 600,000 to 5 million users just last year, according to Mashable. The company has 60 employees.
