In the five years since Basemark was conceived by Tero Sarkkinen, it has become the de-facto software for the benchmarking of mobile devices across platforms, be it Android, iOS or Windows Mobile. The software has thus far been owned by a company called Rightmark, which was co-founded by Mr. Sarkkinen. Now, in a seemingly odd deal, Mr. Sarikknen, Rightware’s own CEO and co-founder has bought out Basemark and split it off as a new company called Basemark Ltd, which has acquired the IP rights to the Basemark unit of Rightware. Mr. Sarkkinen did not make public the specifics of the terms, but did let it out that it was a “seven-figure deal”. Some industry experts believe that considering the current focus of Rightware as a company, Mr. Sarikknen probably was justified in going ahead with the buyout. Mr. Sarikknen however says that it was the executive board of Rightware, which actually approached him with the idea of buying out Basemark, and that he only agreed to it after much deliberations.
The new company, Basemark Ltd., will be headed by Mr. Sarikknen – an industry veteran with 15 years of experience in the benchmarking business. He had already spent 10 years with Futuremark, where he rose up the ranks to become the CEO, before spending the last five years as the CEO and founder of Rightware. The newly formed company also says that nothing will change in the day-to-day operations and they will still provide the exact same services as it did under Rightware. The full suite of their benchmarking software portfolio is said to be among the largest in the world, spanning not just mobile operating platforms, but also OpenGL ES, OpenCL and in-browser benchmarking.
Basemark’s partners include some of the biggest names in the industry like AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, Marvell, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Samsung. Basemark is also reportedly venturing into new, hitherto unexplored areas by developing software for benchmarking smart wearables and expanding to new graphics APIs such as Metal, Khronos, and DirectX 12. It is also apparently looking to create a universal power consumption measurement tool, which will provide a standard for measuring power consumption, which will help manufacturers create more energy-efficient products.