Facebook buys Strobe to shore up smartphone offerings

NEW YORK: With an aim to expand its services on smartphones, social networking giant Facebook has acquired mobile application developer Strobe for an undisclosed amount.

Strobe develops technology which help developers create and distribute applications that work on devices like smartphones and tablet PCs.

The deal will help Facebook, which has over 800 million user globally, to further shore up its offerings on mobile devices.

"We are happy to announce that, as of this week, the Strobe team is joining Facebook," Strobe Founder and CEO Charles Jolley said in a blog post.

However, financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Some reports suggested that the Strobe acquisition was a talent hire, as Facebook was mainly interested in the company's founder Charles Jolley.

He is also the creator of the SproutCore open source framework. Before founding Strobe, Charles was responsible for mobile application development at technology giant Apple Inc.

"Now we are joining the talented people at Facebook to help develop innovative mobile experiences for their users around the world," Jolley added.

For now, the Strobe service would continue to be available to existing users in its existing beta form and SproutCore would continue as an independent project.

The US-based Strobe website lists 15 employees including management, while Facebook has more than 3,000 employees.