Facebook to acquire Instagram for $1 Billion

The name that was in the news when the company finally launched and made their popular photo editing and sharing application to the Android world is now in the news. Facebook has just announced that the social networking giant will acquire Instagram. The announcement was made first by Mark Zuckerberg himself on his Facebook Timeline and was subsequently reported via the site's official blog. The acquisition is reported to be at $1 billion which will be a mix of cold cash and an exchange of shares of stock.

[Official] Twitter swallows Tweetdeck for $40 million

The rumors and reports that have been circulating around Twitter's acquisition of Tweetdeck have been really everywhere. Today though, news about Twitter acquiring the world's most popular third-party twitter client, Tweetdeck, is in circulation for the amount of $40 million in cash and in stock. Twitter have not yet released any comments on this report which came from CNN and CNET, but I believe they will soon they will be announcing it.

It's official! Microsoft to acquire Skype for $8.5 Billion in cash

Skype, one of the most popular, if not the most popular instant messaging service in the world will be acquired by the software giant for a reported $8.5 Billion in cash. This is after rumors and reports came out that Facebook and Google have also done their share of the bid to acquire Skype. Apparently, these two companies have bin outbid by Microsoft. Google and Facebook were also reported to have offered Skype to be acquired between $3 - $4 billion and evidently, Microsoft did their offer better.

[Local] PLDT acquires 51% of Digitel Telecommunications Phils.

PLDT or the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., today, acquired a 51.55% stake of Digitel Telecommunications Phils. The Gokongwei owned company closed the stock-to-stock transaction between PLDT with a transfer of stock worth P74.1 billion. With this acquisition, PLDT currently holds 67% of the Philippines' Cellular market. Gokonwei Group will also be getting a 12.8% stake at PLDT. 

AT&T to acquire T-Mobile USA for $39 billion from Deutsche Telekom

Oh, this is a surprise! The rumors were pointing to Sprint getting the deal to acquire T-Mobile USA but nope that does not happen, not when AT&T is around. Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile's parent company is a world leader when it comes to telecommunications but the Germany company wanted to get rid of their US operations for "various reasons". So, Sprint was really just an option because this news right here is truly a surprise, but it makes sense.

Western Digital to acquire Hitachi GST for $4.3 billion

Western Digital, a company known for producing hard drives and storage solution devices, have announced that they will be acquiring one of their competition, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, for $4.3 billion. Back in 2005 Seagate acquired Maxtor for $2 billion, so this is not something that is new to the HDD industry. Endgadget points that it's hard to say what this acquisition will mean with regards to pricing and competition. We will have to see what the future lies then.