[Updated 2:40 pm Pacific] This week of acquisitions in Seattle tech is going out with a bang. Taiwan-based mobile device maker HTC announced early Friday that it is buying Seattle mobile data-syncing startup Dashwire for as much as $18.5 million, making the smaller company a wholly owned subsidiary through its American unit.
Dashwire’s products synchronize and back up data from smartphones and other mobile devices to the Web. The company has been around since 2006 and has about two dozen employees. Founder and CEO Ford Davidson reports via email that Dashwire will stay in place: “We’ll be continuing to build out our team here in Seattle, where HTC already has its primary North America presence.”
Investors in Dashwire include ubiquitous Seattle angel Geoff Entress, electronics retailer Best Buy, and Trilogy Partners, the venture firm started by wireless-industry veteran and current Clearwire interim CEO John Stanton. Davidson, a former Microsoftie, said in a news release that Dashwire is excited to be “joining the HTC family to drive even more innovation in this space.”
[Adds clarification on HTC and IV] As we reported in April, Dashwire has a license with Intellectual Ventures to use the patent clearinghouse’s intellectual property for defensive purposes. That was related to Dashwire being sued in federal court by Synchronoss (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SNCR]]), a New Jersey-based company that provides some similar services. The Wall Street Journal speculated that the IV licensing might be one driver in HTC’s decision to buy Dashwire, but that theory was punctured later Friday by IV, which notes that HTC already has a licensing deal with the Bellevue, WA-based intellectual property firm dating back to last year.
