Danger Inc.

Last updated
Danger, Inc.
Subsidiary
Industry Software, services
FateMerged with Microsoft; ceased production
FoundedDecember 1, 1999;19 years ago (1999-12-01) [1]
Founders Andy Rubin
Joe Britt
Matt Hershenson
DefunctFebruary 11, 2008 (2008-02-11)
Headquarters Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Products Client-server software
RevenueUndisclosed
Number of employees
Undisclosed
Parent Microsoft
Website www.danger.com at the Wayback Machine (archived April 26, 2011)

Danger, Inc. was a company specializing in hardware design, software, and services for mobile computing devices. Its most notable product was the T-Mobile Sidekick (also known as Danger Hiptop), which was the first smartphone to capture the attention of pop culture celebrities and teenagers in North America. The Sidekick or Hiptop was a pioneer in client-server ("cloud"-based) smartphones and created the App (Applications) marketplace, later popularized by Android and iOS. Danger was acquired by Microsoft on 11 February 2008, for a price rumored to be around $500 million (USD). [2]

Mobile computing use of portable computers

Mobile computing is human–computer interaction in which a computer is expected to be transported during normal usage, which allows for transmission of data, voice and video. Mobile computing involves mobile communication, mobile hardware, and mobile software. Communication issues include ad hoc networks and infrastructure networks as well as communication properties, protocols, data formats and concrete technologies. Hardware includes mobile devices or device components. Mobile software deals with the characteristics and requirements of mobile applications.

T-Mobile is the brand name used by the mobile communications subsidiaries of the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG. The brand is active in the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United States.

Danger Hiptop Smartphone produced by Danger Incorporated

The Danger Hiptop, also re-branded as the T-Mobile Sidekick, Mobiflip and Sharp Jump is a GPRS/EDGE/UMTS smartphone that was produced by Danger, Inc. from 2002 to 2010.

Contents

History

The company was originally started by former Apple Inc., WebTV and Philips employees Andy Rubin, Joe Britt, and Matt Hershenson. Co-founder Andy Rubin left in 2003 to create the company Android, which was later acquired by Google. [3]

Apple Inc. Technology company; developer of consumer electronics and multimedia platforms

Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. It is considered one of the Big Four tech companies along with Amazon, Google, and Facebook.

Philips Dutch multinational electronics company

Koninklijke Philips N.V. is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Amsterdam, one of the largest electronics companies in the world, currently focused in the area of healthcare and lighting. It was founded in Eindhoven in 1891 by Gerard Philips and his father Frederik, with their first products being light bulbs. It was once one of the largest electronic conglomerates in the world and currently employs around 74,000 people across 100 countries. The company gained its royal honorary title in 1998 and dropped the "Electronics" in its name in 2013.

Andy Rubin American businessman

Andrew E. Rubin is an American computer programmer, engineer, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. He is the founder and CEO of tech startup incubator Playground Global and a partner at venture capital firm Redpoint Ventures. He is the co-founder and former CEO of both Danger Inc. and Android Inc.

After the Microsoft acquisition in 2008, the former Danger staff were absorbed into the Mobile Communications Business (MCB) of the Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division, where they worked on a future mobile phone platform known as "Project Pink" which would eventually be released as Kin. [4] Because of poor sales, production was ceased just a few weeks after its release. The Kin development team was folded into the Windows Phone team, and Microsoft stopped promoting the devices. [5]

Microsoft Kin mobile phone line from Microsoft

Kin was a short-lived mobile phone line from Microsoft designed for users of social networking. Microsoft described the phones' target demographic as men and women between ages 15 and 30. It was manufactured by Sharp Corporation and sold through Verizon Wireless.

By October 2009, most of the ex-Danger employees had left Microsoft. [6] Until March 2013, Rubin headed Android development, and brought former Danger Director of Design Matias Duarte to Google.

The Register described the Microsoft acquisition as "a classic case of M & A failure, where the acquirer has failed to integrate either the technology or the people from the company that it bought." [7] Later in 2013 Microsoft purchased Nokia's mobile phone business, which is also seen as a failure. [8]

Mergers and acquisitions transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations or their operating units are transferred or combined

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations, or their operating units are transferred or consolidated with other entities. As an aspect of strategic management, M&A can allow enterprises to grow or downsize, and change the nature of their business or competitive position.

Nokia Finnish technology corporation

Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics company, founded in 1865. Nokia's headquarters are in Espoo, in the greater Helsinki metropolitan area. In 2018, Nokia employed approximately 103,000 people across over 100 countries, did business in more than 130 countries, and reported annual revenues of around €23 billion. Nokia is a public limited company listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange. It is the world's 415th-largest company measured by 2016 revenues according to the Fortune Global 500, having peaked at 85th place in 2009. It is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index.

October 2009 data loss

In early October 2009, a server malfunction or technician error at Danger's data centers resulted in the loss of all Sidekick user data. As Sidekicks store users' data on Danger's servers—versus using local storage—users lost contact directories, calendars, photos, and all other media not locally backed up. Local backup could be accomplished through an app ($9.99 USD) which synchronized contacts, calendar, and tasks, but not notes, between the web and a local Windows PC. In an October 10 letter to subscribers, Microsoft expressed its doubt that any data would be recovered. [9]

The customer's data that was lost was, at the time, being hosted in Microsoft's data centers. [10] Some media reports have suggested that Microsoft hired Hitachi to perform an upgrade to its storage area network (SAN), when something went wrong, resulting in data destruction. [11] Microsoft did not have an active backup of the data and it had to be restored from a month-old copy of the server data, totalling 800GB in size, from offsite backup tapes. The entire restoration of data took over 2 months for customer data and full functionality to be restored. [12]

The Danger/Sidekick episode is one in a series of cloud computing mishaps that have raised questions about the reliability of such offerings. [13]

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The Danger Hiptop and Danger Hiptop2 devices come with a variety of included software titles.

Mobile computing devices store and share data over a mobile network, or a database which is actually stored by the mobile device. This could be a list of contacts, price information, distance travelled, or any other information.

Android (operating system) Free and open-source operating system for mobile devices, developed by Google

Android is a mobile operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open source software, designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android is developed by a consortium of developers known as the Open Handset Alliance, with the main contributor and commercial marketer being Google.

A mobile operating system is an operating system for phones, tablets, smartwatches, or other mobile devices. While computers such as typical laptops are 'mobile', the operating systems usually used on them are not considered mobile ones, as they were originally designed for desktop computers that historically did not have or need specific mobile features. This distinction is becoming blurred in some newer operating systems that are hybrids made for both uses.

Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and client software. Dropbox was founded in 2007 by MIT students Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi as a startup company, with initial funding from seed accelerator Y Combinator.

2009 Sidekick data loss

The Sidekick data outage of 2009 resulted in an estimated 800,000 smartphone users in the United States temporarily losing personal data, such as emails, address books and photos from their mobile handsets. The computer servers holding the data were run by Microsoft. The brand of phone affected was the Danger Hiptop, also known as the "Sidekick", and were connected via the T-Mobile cellular network. At the time, it was described as the biggest disaster in cloud computing history.

ZumoDrive

ZumoDrive is a defunct cloud-based file hosting service operated by Zecter, Inc. On December 22, 2010, Zecter announced its acquisition by Motorola Mobility. The service enabled users to store and sync files online, and also between computers using their HybridCloud storage solution; the latter functionality stopped working in approximately September 2011, while the former was undergoing formal takedown on May 1, 2012. ZumoDrive had a cross-platform client that enabled users to copy any file or folder into the ZumoDrive virtual disk that was then synced to the web and the users' other computers and hand-held devices. Files in the ZumoDrive virtual disk could be shared with other ZumoDrive users or accessed from the web. Users could also upload files manually through a web browser interface. A free ZumoDrive account offered 2 GB of storage, and users could upgrade to paid plans ranging from 10 GB to 500 GB for a monthly subscription fee. The ZumoDrive service was integrated into Yahoo! Mail, allowing users to send or receive any file on their ZumoDrive, and powers HP's recent CloudDrive technology, bundled on all new HP Mini netbooks.

SwiftKey company and input method

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Microsoft Mobile Services are a set of proprietary mobile services created specifically for mobile devices, they are typically offered through mobile applications and mobile browser for Windows Phone, Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Nokia platforms, BREW, and Java ME. Microsoft's mobile services are typically connected with a Microsoft account and often come preinstalled on Microsoft's own mobile operating systems while they are offered via various means for other platforms. Microsoft started to develop for mobile computing platforms with the launch of Windows CE in 1996 and later added Microsoft's Pocket Office suite to their Handheld PC line of PDAs in April 2000. From December 2014 to June 2015, Microsoft made a number of corporate acquisitions, buying several of the top applications listed in Google Play and the App Store including Acompli, Sunrise Calendar, Datazen, Wunderlist, Echo Notification Lockscreen, and MileIQ.

IDrive Inc.

IDrive Inc. is a technology company that specializes in data backup applications. Its flagship product is IDrive, an online backup service available to Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android users.

A Rich Mobile Application (RMA) is a mobile application that inherits numerous properties from rich Internet applications and features several explicit properties, such as context awareness and ubiquity. RMAs are "energy efficient, multi-tier, online mobile applications originated from the convergence of mobile cloud computing, future web, and imminent communication technologies envisioning to deliver rich user experience via high functionality, immersive interaction, and crisp response in a secure wireless environment while enabling context-awareness, offline usability, portability, and data ubiquity".

Microsoft Mobile Subsidiary of multinational company Microsoft, involved in the development and manufacturing of mobile phones and mobile computing devices

Microsoft Mobile was a subsidiary of Microsoft involved in the development and manufacturing of mobile phones. Based in Espoo, Finland, it was established in 2014 following the acquisition of Nokia's Devices and Services division by Microsoft in a deal valued at €5.4 billion, which was completed in April 2014. Nokia's then-CEO, Stephen Elop, joined Microsoft as president of its Devices division following the acquisition, and the acquisition was part of Steve Ballmer's strategy to turn Microsoft into a "devices and services" company. Under a 10-year licensing agreement, Microsoft Mobile held rights to sell feature phones running the S30+ platform under the Nokia brand.

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References

  1. ↑ "Danger - CrunchBase". CrunchBase . 2016. Retrieved 2016-02-22.
  2. ↑ "How Much Did Microsoft Pay For Danger?". Gigaom. 12 February 2008.
  3. ↑ "THE RISE OF ANDROID: How a flailing startup became the world's biggest computing platform". Business Insider France (in French). Retrieved 2018-01-04.
  4. ↑ "Microsoft's Pink Struggles Spill Over To Sidekick". ChannelWeb. UMB. 12 October 2009. Archived from the original on 2010-07-20.
  5. ↑ Todd Bishop (30 June 2010). "Confirmed: Microsoft Kin is dead". TechFlash.
  6. ↑ "The Sidekick catastrophe: A curse for Microsoft, but a blessing for Motorola?". Betanews. 12 October 2009.
  7. ↑ "Dead Pink phone fallout hits Microsoft's top brass". The Register . 8 July 2010.
  8. ↑ http://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/internet/microsofts-5-worst-acquisitions-ever/52734256
  9. ↑ "T-Mobile Sidekick Disaster: Danger's Servers Crashed, And They Don't Have A Backup". TechCrunch. 2009-10-10. Retrieved 2013-06-14.
  10. ↑ "Danger no backups". The Inquirer . 12 October 2009.
  11. ↑ "Sidekick failure rumors point fingers at outsourcing, lack of backups". engadget . 11 October 2009.
  12. ↑ "Microsoft's Danger Problem Blamed on Management". RoughlyDrafted. 15 October 2009.
  13. ↑ "From Sidekick to Gmail: A short history of cloud computing outages". NetworkWorld . 12 October 2009.
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