On Wednesday, Samsung purchased Boxee for about $30 million, according to TechCrunch and their unnamed sources. This news comes after an Israeli media site Calcalist, reported that Samsung had purchased Boxee. So far, Boxee hasn’t commented Samsung acquiring them.
Boxee had been shopping around to get a new round of funding and then courting outright buyers. Boxee was one of the first companies to stream movies and shows from the web to your TV. The market has grown and we’ve seen many competitors. Including Roku and Apple’s TV. Now it appears, Boxee is looking to enter the competition as well. And acquiring Boxee is a good thing for Samsung. It gives them a pretty big leap into the competition. Samsung can also throw in some cash and own the competition, like they are doing with Android.
Boxee had turned itself into a cloud-based DVR and got away from being an open-source software. Set-top boxes competition has also grown with all kinds of DVR set-top boxes from the cable companies and everyone in between. Even Google TV.
What is surprising here is that the takeover happened at a really low price. $30 million is basically chunk change for the South Korean manufacturer. It’s going to be interesting to see how this all plays out for Samsung. But I think they’ll use it to enhance their TV’s and possibly offer it integrated with all the features on the Galaxy S4 and other Galaxy devices. Which makes plenty of sense right?
So far there’s no word about what will happen with current Boxee customers. But I’d assume that Boxee customers would still have their account and still be able to use the service until the acquisition is complete. We’ll be sure to check out what happens with Boxee and Samsung over the next few months.
How many of you are excited to see what Samsung will do with Boxee? Will they keep it a separate entity, or just swallow up Boxee and integrate it into all of their services and products? Let us know in the comments below.