Motorola Bought 280 North, A Web Apps Company

Andy Rubin (Google) and Dr. Sanjay K. Jha (Motorola) join Om Malik on stage at Mobilize 2009 in San Francisco.

Motorola is buying 280 North, a tiny software and web applications start-up started by ex-Apple employees, for $20 million. The company makes a web application framework called Cappuccino that allows anyone to build desktop-quality applications for the web. A good example is their 280 Slides offering, which allows users to create and view presentations on the web.

The acquisition is a pointer toward Motorola’s future plans, when its handset business (along with some other hardware product lines) is spun off into an independent company, Motorola Mobility. It is also Motorola’s attempt to capture the Apple magic.

Motorola’s desire to build its own software and services experiences only exacerbates the internal tensions in the Android ecosystem. Most handset makers — HTC, Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson — are looking for an edge over others, at a time when carriers and Google are exercising more control over Android. In a superb piece of analysis, The dirty little secret about Google Android, Jason Hiner points to the ineffectiveness of the Open Handset Alliance and other problems.

Motorola, which has bet the farm on Android, needs to differentiate more aggressively via software and services, or it runs the risk of being lost in the sea of Android phones that are emerging every day. What it needs is unique and better Android user experiences. So far, any attempts to build a UI and interesting new apps haven’t come to fruition.  The company recently shut down its push service, Blur, because of poor usage and a bad user experience.

What Motorola needs is folks with true web and social networking skills to develop interfaces based on what it already has: a solid push infrastructure. The 280 North team helps add fresh blood to Motorola and gives the phone maker access to talented programmers, who can in turn help the company build on top of Android OS.  This “acq-hire” type deal is definitely a good one for its investors, who invested $250,000 in the company. The investment came from Lowercase Capital, Y Combinator and other angels.