LITTLE ROCK — Oracle buys RightNow for $1.5 billion
Oracle Corp., the world’s second-largest software maker, has agreed to buy RightNow Technologies Inc. for $1.5 billion, gaining customer-service expertise to bolster a new Internet-based product.
RightNow investors will get $43 a share, Oracle said last week in a statement. That was 20 percent more than Bozeman, Mont.-based RightNow’s closing price Oct. 21. The stock, which has increased by more than 50 percent this year, closed Friday at $43.10.
The acquisition will add software that helps companies serve customers using call centers, Internet and social networks. Oracle is making its biggest purchase since Sun Microsystems Inc. last year after introducing the Oracle Public Cloud, which delivers software online.
Companies that offer software as a service are sought after, said Richard Williams, an analyst at Cross Research in Livingston, N.J.
After gobbling up more than 70 companies in a $40 billion buying spree, Oracle said this month it is focusing on smaller deals and building on its own products to find growth. Oracle embarked on its run of acquisitions in 2005 when it bought the human-resources software maker PeopleSoft Inc.
Ericsson exiting cell-phone market
LOS ANGELES - In the latest sign that smart phones are replacing simpler cell phones, Swedish device maker Ericsson is getting out of the business it helped to foster more than a decade ago.
Japanese electronics giant Sony Corp. will pay Ericsson about $1.5 billion for its half of the Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications joint venture, which was formed in 2001 and makes a variety of mobile devices, including some Google-powered Android smart phones.
Ericsson, a pioneering company that helped popularize simpler cell phones in the 1990s, will step out of the mobile market to concentrate on other elements of its networking business. If the deal is cleared by regulators, 10-year-old Sony Ericsson will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony.
Adding smart phones to its main catalog would enable Sony to produce televisions and mobile devices that better communicate with one another, the company said, perhaps helping it become a stronger competitor against firms such as Apple Inc., which makes the iPhone, iPad and Mac computer.
“We can more rapidly and more widely offer consumers smart phones, laptops, tablets and televisions that seamlessly connect with one another and open up new worlds of online entertainment,” Howard Stringer, Sony’s chairman, chief executive and president, said in a statement.
U-Verse connects wirelessly to TVs
NEW YORK - AT&T Inc.’s U-Verse TV service is going wireless - inside the home. Its new set-top boxes will use the home’s Wi-Fi to get their TV programming, with no need for a coaxial cable. That means TV sets can be moved from room to room and still work.
“You could move your U-Verse to the patio for the football game if the weather’s nice or to the guest room if you have guests coming in,” said David Christopher, chief marketing officer.
That’s not really why AT&T developed it, though. The company was looking for a way to cut installation time and cost, Christopher said. With wireless boxes, installers won’t need to run cable or drill through walls.
U-Verse is delivered with Internet technology rather than standard cable technology. That makes it easier for AT&T to send the signal wirelessly. Other, smaller phone companies have used wireless set-top boxes for a few years.
The service uses standard Wi-Fi and has about the same range. The boxes will be available starting this week for a one-time fee of $49, plus the standard monthly $7 box rental fee. They’re made by Cisco Systems Inc.
A Wi-Fi hot spot can serve up to two set-top boxes wirelessly. A home can have two more set-top boxes, but they would have to be wired up, since the hot spot has limited capacity. All four could show high-definition programming simultaneously.
Texas-Mexico border gets 2nd drone
MCALLEN, Texas - A second drone to patrol the Texas-Mexico border for U.S. Customs and Border Protection will be sent to Corpus Christi this week.
U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, and Michael McCaul and Blake Farenthold, both R-Texas, announced the delivery of the long-awaited Predator drone last week.
Officials announced in July that Texas would get a second drone to patrol its 1,254-mile border with Mexico. Along with another planned for Arizona, the drone brings Customs and Border Protection’s total to six on the Southwest border.
The new Texas drone will be based at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi with the existing one, which also patrolled the Gulf of Mexico.
The Predator can fly for 20 hours without refueling, extending by many hours the surveillance capability of a helicopter. Flight crews control the planes remotely.
Business, Pages 22 on 10/31/2011