Facebook to buy mobile specialist Snaptu

Facebook, with more than 500 million members, is seeking to deepen its penetration of the 5 billion-plus global mobile phone market with the acquisition of the UK/Israeli company Snaptu. Snaptu offers a service that makes social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn easily available on “feature phones,” the non-smartphones that make up more than 80 per cent of handsets sold globally.

The four-year-old company, which is based in London and has offices in Silicon Valley in the US and Tel Aviv, said in a blog note that the deal was expected to close within a few weeks. It did not put a figure on the acquisition, but Israeli news reports valued it at between $40m and $70m. Facebook said that by being part of the company, Snaptu’s team and technology would be able to deliver a better mobile experience on feature phones more quickly. It had delivered the Facebook for Feature Phones mobile application in January, designed to work on more than 2,500 different handset models.