MobUI acquires Action Engine to speed app development

Action Engine did have a list of big-name customers including AOL, The Wall Street Journal.com, MSNBC.com, Sports Illustrated and TiVo. The company also made in-roads into both social networking with a live-chat service for VH1 and mobile advertising through an ad-extension platform launched at the Spring CTIA show. Yet, according to Burry, Action Engine was focused on every mobile platform except the iPhone, which has already captured more than 100 million mobile app downloads through its App Store portal.

One of MobUI’s first customers developed a group chat application for the iPhone through its relationship with the company – a relationship Action Engine had been building for nearly eight months, developing the app for every other platform outside of the iPhone, Burry said. This customer connection created a dependency that ultimately led to the acquisition.

“There a came a point where we realized that financially we were actually able to make an offer and purchase the assets, all the codes and all the servers and projects of Action Engine,” Burry said. “We realized that this was possible and because of the importance of this project, we went ahead and did so.”

MobUI acquired all Action Engine’s assets and intellectual property for an undisclosed sum. The company is starting with a focus on the iPhone, but plans to expand support to include downloadable Blackberry, Java, Windows Mobile and BREW mobile apps.