Motorola Mobility Buys Cloud Service Provider Zecter

Motorola Mobility, the smartphone arm of Motorola that's being spun off early next year, has acquired Zecter, which provides a cloud-based service for synchronizing media content among a smartphone, PC, and tablet. Financial details were not disclosed.

The acquisition, announced Wednesday, brings to Motorola Mobility two products, ZumoDrive and ZumoCast. The former is for cloud-based content synchronization between devices, while the latter is for moving music, video, photos, and documents wirelessly from a smartphone to other devices.

The innovation in the technology is its virtual file system that makes content in one device available through another, even when the content is not stored locally. Motorola plans to incorporate Zecter's technology within MotoBlur, which is an embedded service that integrates a user's contacts, photos, calendars, and other information from various sources like Facebook, Twitter, corporate e-mail accounts, and Gmail. The data for MotoBlur is stored on Motorola's servers, so users can access their information even if they lose their smartphones or switch to another device.

Chris Wyatt, corporate VP of software and services for Motorola Mobility, says Zecter will add multi-platform support to MotoBlur, so consumers can get access to their content and media from anywhere. "We believe that Zecter enables that seamless experience with the necessary security measures, and we are delighted to be able to work with this team," Wyatt said in a statement.

In folding Zecter into its new home, its ZumoCast software will not be available to new users while "enhancements are made," Motorola Mobility says. Existing users can access the service without interruption. The ZumoDrive product won't be affected by the acquisition.

Motorola Mobility, which begins public trading in New York Jan. 4, makes smartphones based on Google's Android operating system. Competitors include Samsung Electronics and HTC. Verizon Wireless, a key Motorola partner, plans to release next year Motorola Mobility phones that run on the carrier's new high-speed, 4G network. At the same time, Verizon is expected to start selling Apple's iPhone.

Motorola Mobility has had success in the Android market. In October, parent company Motorola reported that its mobile phone unit marked its first quarterly profit in three years in the third quarter.