Last week, there was an unconfirmed report stating that Microsoft is buying mobile ad network/platform, InMobi. The Bangalore, India company says that their network has reached over a billion users per month.
In this unconfirmed report, it said that Google and Yahoo were talking with the company as well, but nothing ended up coming to fruition. Google had apparently been in serious talks with InMobi, and the rumor was that the acquisition price was placed at $2 billion.
If all this is true and Microsoft did acquire InMobi, Microsoft’s mobile position would become much higher when it comes to mobile advertising. As it stands right now, the Windows Phone OS isn’t having nearly the impact as Microsoft would like, and this means that Bing in mobile is also having little impact in the online market. The company is falling behind Facebook, Google and Yahoo in the race for mobile ad revenues. Acquisition of InMobi would help turn things around for Microsoft.
So far, Microsoft has declined to make a statement to ether confirm or deny reports of the acquisition. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, who responded to an email by Greg Sterling, said that “we don’t comment on rumors or speculation.”