its target market of small business and consumers since 2008, when CEO Brad Smith set a new strategy that calls for developing “connected services” software. The latest example is SnapTax, a mobile tax-filing app that came out of the company’s San Diego-based TurboTax division.
—Qualcomm (NASDAQ: [[ticker: QCOM]]) named six finalists for its Q Prize competition for early stage startups focused in wireless technologies or services. The finalists, who were selected from North America, Europe, China, India, Israel, and South Korea, will get to compete at Demo to win the innovation incentive prize.
—Scale Venture Partners co-founder Kate Mitchell, who also is this year’s chair at the National Venture Capital Association, predicted that venture investing in 2011 will be more like the mid-1980s than the mid-1990s—or the mid-2000s. IPOs, M&As, and pre-money valuations have all been gradually increasing.
—Verve Wireless, which is based in Encinitas, CA, and Bethesda, MD, acquired a Washington D.C. mobile advertising technology company called Deconstruct Media. No financial terms were disclosed.
—Jackson, MS-based SmartSynch launched a wireless communications platform for utility smart grids, giving San Diego’s Qualcomm a fresh opportunity to develop a vast new market for its Brew MP mobile operating system.
—San Diego’s Maxwell Technologies (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MXWL]]) said it reached settlements with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice following an investigation into potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other securities laws. The company, which makes ultracapacitor energy storage cells, agreed to pay $6.35 million to settle civil charges with the SEC, and $8 million to resolve criminal charges with the Justice Department.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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