Mergers acquisitions are nothing new in the tech world, but every now again, one comes along that makes us raise our eyebrows. The news that gaming company Razer was purchasing Android phone maker Nextbit certainly falls into that category.
ile the exact terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, Nextbit will continue to function as a stalone business under Razer, which will reportedly retain all of the Android phone maker’s 30 employees. Nextbit wrote in a forum post that while it will cease selling its Robin phone all accessories, it will “continue to fulfill warranties for 6 more months. … () provide software updates security patches through February 2018.” Company co-founder CEO Tom Moss added that Nextbit decided to join Razer “to reach a wider audience continue our mission … of pushing the boundaries of what our devices can do.”
On the surface, the pairing seems strange. Razer is best known for its hardware, with notebooks, mice, keyboards all geared toward gamers, has yet to dip its toe into the mobile world. Nextbit, on the other h, is best known for its Kickstarted Robin smartphone, which raised more than $1.3 million dollars on the back of some 3,600 supporters.
en it launched in September 2015, Robin instantly captivated the Android community with a unique design concept that challenged the traditional smartphone conventions. th a boxy blue aesthetic, Robin instantly stood out in a crowd of black rectangles, but it wasn’t just its good looks that caught people’s attention. Nextbit marketed the $399 Robin as “the only cloud-first smartphone,” with a concept that continuously backed up your apps photos to free up local storage space. Its ambitious idea never really caught on, however, as Nextbit struggled to compete with the larger Android players.
In a statement, Razer co-founder CEO Min-ang Tan praised Nextbit as “one of the most exciting companies in the mobile space,” adding that “with the talent that Nextbit brings to Razer, we look forward to unleashing more disruption growing our business in new areas.”
The endgame: There are several ways this could play out. The most obvious is that Razer could be looking to launch its own smartphone, possibly one that focuses on gaming. ile there are plenty of hsets with high-end chips high-resolution screens that deliver powerful gaming experiences, there is no phone on the market that truly caters to the mobile gamer. A Razer-bred Nextbit phone could fill a niche get Razer’s foot in the door. And then there’s the cloud. In an interview with TechCrunch, Tan said he was particularly intrigued with what Nextbit was doing with “phone technology on the cloud-based storage side of things,” so Razer could also be looking to bolster its cloud gaming cred. It currently offers Synapse, “the world’s first cloud-based setting network for gamers,” Cortex for automated online backups, but the Nextbit acquisition could pave the way for a full-fledged cloud-based gaming service.
