If you are a company with billions of dollars in cash reserves that has attempted, and largely failed, to get into the mobile ad space for many years, what would you do? If your answer is to buy an already successful mobile ad network, you may have a bright future at Microsoft. According to reports (that have not yet been confirmed) Microsoft is in negotiations to buy the mobile ad network InMobi.
This would quickly push Microsoft into a competitive position with giants like Google, Facebook and others. Mobile ads are clearly the way of the future and try as they might up to this point, Microsoft can’t seem to gain any traction in this area. Bing continues to lag way behind Google, and the Windows Phone just won’t catch on.
Even where the Microsoft Surface has found some success, it is nowhere near the iPad or Android tablets, which puts some limits on how Microsoft can use mobile ads.
InMobi, which is an India based company, already interacts with over a billion users per month. Adding InMobi to the Microsoft team would immediately give them the success that they wanted. There were rumors last year that Google and/or Yahoo wanted to buy the company, but they could not come to any agreements. Experts suggest that a buyout price would be around $2 billion, which is certainly within the reach of Microsoft.
The original reports came from Seeking Alpha, which seems to be fairly confident that the deal is essentially done and just awaiting the announcement. You can read their report HERE.
