Microsoft Acquires Danger, Inc (Sidekick)

[MacRumors]

In industry related news, Microsoft announced on Monday that they had acquired Danger, Inc. Danger is the company responsible for the popular Sidekick marketed through T-Mobile.



Terms of the purchase were not disclosed. The founders of Danger previously worked at Apple as engineers before leaving to found the company. Some see this is a response to the Apple's recent success:

Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies of Campbell, said the acquisition provides further evidence that Microsoft is mirroring the thinking of Apple, which has married software and hardware to make simple, fashionable consumer products like the iPod and iPhone.

"Sometime in the last two years Microsoft fundamentally woke up and realized that even though they're a software company, they had to use hardware to control their destiny"

Article Link

[bloodycape]

Danger is not the only one making Sidkicks Sharp actually made a few and most notably Moto made one also.

[SAMTATSICPRO]

I'm interested to see what this will do to apple, Probably nothing.
Microsoft is desperate for anything right now.

[Doctor Q]

Microsoft is mirroring the thinking of Apple

That's the first time this has happened.

[HornetOSX]

Now all of the sidekick kids can get the sidekick 4 in poop brown to match thier Zune!!!!!!

[kstefanick]

BAHAHAHA! Why is Microsoft trying so hard to copy Apple? Are they really unable to come up with new ideas on their own? Someone should tell them that copying a great company, like Apple, is worse than coming up with something on their own and failing. Another one of Microsoft's problems is that they are just thinking about the NOW when Apple is always thinking about the future (fast money). No one will want a big bulky phone in a few months when they can have something as slim as like the iPhone. I think that Sidekicks would slowly fade out if the iPhone was available for all cell phone companies and if it wasn't so breakable.

FTW

[minik]

I have the Sidekick 3 more than a year now. It's a decent device, but heavily tied into the T-mobile/Danger services. It's sad to see MS took over Danger.

MS is really into the teens market now?

[nagromme]

Steve Wozniak was on Danger's board, BTW. May still be.

[baxterbrittle]

This is a sad sad day. Apparently Sony Ericsson has also joined with Microsoft to develop phones with Windows Mobile. So basically soon there will only be a handful of mobile operating systems and the innovation will be lost. I am not quite sure what they are aiming to do here, are Microsoft trying to capture the youth market as well as the business/smartphone market? The danger os is actually really well designed, better than just about any other mobile os, it is simple, stable, but has a lot of nice touches in it's operation. It doesn't look very Apple like, but fundamentally it is surprisingly similar. This is a sad day where an elegant well thought out operating environment has been purchased by Microsoft to then be butchered and converted to a 'teen windows mobile'

Not Happy

[Eric Lewis]

btw zune phone

[waterbouy]

Originally Posted by Eric Lewis

btw zune phone

I am thinking it will be a zhone...

[Orng]

This time next year it will be rebranded ZunePhone, and the pundits will be calling it the "iPhone Killer," and rational people everywhere will scratch their heads and wonder how exactly they think this ZunePhone is going to completely obliterate the iPhone market, or do they actually mean to say "iPhone Competitor?" But the other 90% of the population will be all like "Ohhh, Apple had better watch out!" And Steve Jobs will catch a glimpse of it on engadget and snarf his tofu. Don't laugh while you're eating, Steve!

The Zune and now this ZunePhone always make me think of Krispy Kreme's complete and utter failure to set up a Canadian operation. Anyone in Canada remember when Krispy Kreme came and everyone was all like "Ohhh, Tim Horton's had better watch out!" That worked out well for them, didn't it?

KK didn't understand that market any better than MS understands cell phones or music players, but they came flouncing in with all the hubris and cockiness they could muster. They were the Zune of doughnuts. And that was their problem: they thought we all wanted coffee and doughnuts, but what we really wanted was coffee, a bagel and chili. (And maybe a doughnut, but only if nobody's watching).

So yeah, that's where I see this phone going under Microsoft. A few people standing by the conveyor belt saying, "Oooh! Run mine through the glaze a few more times!" while the rest of us kind of shudder and look away.

[XP XtraProblems]

How sad. Another innovative small company with creative ideas snatched up by microsoft. The sidekick interface is at least attractive and fun to use, I guess that will be replaced by Windows Mobile, yuck.

[Popeye206]

Originally Posted by kstefanick

BAHAHAHA! Why is Microsoft trying so hard to copy Apple? Are they really unable to come up with new ideas on their own?

I agree 150%! Microsoft has missed the mark so many times on their own... it seems the only thing they can do is copy anymore. It's sad.

[nostaws]

basically soon there will only be a handful of mobile operating systems and the innovation will be lost

Frankly, most of the cell phone OSes suck, have sucked, and will continue to suck. They have engineers creating interfaces. So with the gazillion interfaces out there, there hasn't been much innovation up to this point.

That is why Apple products do so well: simplicity. I recently bought a t-mobile dash running windows mobile 6. WOW it is hard to do anything. It really does have some great features, but you can't find any of them. It is incredibly unintuitive. I feel sorry for non tech people and most mobile phones out there.

Windows Mobile could be a pretty great OS, if they hired two common sense people to create a more intuitive interface for it.

[Rootman]

I have a Sidekick. It was great a few years ago (I had the first B&W version, then upgraded to V2 when color came out), but it's a piece of crap, really.

[JayLenochiniMac]

I had the sidekick 2 and 3 before I got the iPhone. I was never able to get into the treo/blackberry thing so it was the sidekick that did it for me. However, it's now nothing compared to the iPhone (not to mention being a ghetto device to due to its popularilty with the low class) and its built quality has gone downhill (as anybody who's had the original Sidekick 2 and Sharp Sidekick 3 would know).

[KittyToy]

I have a Sidekick lx,their keyboard is great when your an avid texter, but the os sucks, not to mention the web browser, people complain the iphone on edge is slow, well on the sidekick it's slower and it don't even render full web pages.

[Eric Lewis]

this is funny

Apple + At&t iPhone

MS + TMOBILE

ahahaha

[PlaceofDis]

it just seems that Microsoft has money to spend and are buying whomever they can? with hopes that it works out in the end.

[Unspeaked]

Originally Posted by Eric Lewis

this is funny

Apple + At&t iPhone

MS + TMOBILE

ahahaha

And what's your point?

Isn't it Apple + T-Mobile in Germany?

[true777]

Of course the founders of Danger were not only former Apple employees, but more importantly, one of them (Andy Rubin) now is the head of Google's Android platform -- basically the guy who first dreamt up the Sidekick, and later the Android mobile platform. And yes, he worked for Apple and General Magic in the 90's, and later started WebTV which was ironically sold to Micro$oft, too.

[ChrisA]

Originally Posted by Popeye206

I agree 150%! Microsoft has missed the mark so many times on their own... it seems the only thing they can do is copy anymore. It's sad.

"anymore"? What was their first product? MS-DOS? They didn't even write that they bough it from Digital Reaserach. Nothing new here, MS as usual.

[jwsmiths]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3)

I've never seen the appeal of something like the sidekick. Always just assumed it was a teenager thing.

[deathshrub]

Originally Posted by bloodycape

Danger is not the only one making Sidkicks Sharp actually made a few and most notably Moto made one also.

Not quite.

Danger makes the OS that is on every sidekick/hiptop, not the actual device.

Sharp has traditionally manufactured the sidekick/hiptop, but motorola has manufactured one, dubbed the sidekick slide if I'm not mistaken.

This is pretty sad, Danger was a good company. I will absolutely be breaking my T-Mobile contract in March, selling my Sidekick 3 and pick up an iPhone.