America Online acquires wireless technology firm Wildseed

America Online acquires wireless technology firm Wildseed

American Online has acquired wireless technology firm Wildseed in order to expand its expertise in the services for the mobile phones and other small screen wireless devices. Wildseed is a company based in the Kirkland, Washington and is best known for its SmartSkin interactive accessories that ran on the Curitel Identity handset. It was founded by Microsoft alum Eric Engstrom.

Both the companies declined to reveal the financial details behind this acquisition. This deal happens to be the second such acquisition for America Online as it looks towards expanding its range of services for their much-anticipated My AOL services. Last week, they purchased the online data storage company Xdrive.

John McKinley, president and CTO of digital services at AOL, said in a statement: “Data-related mobile technologies are on the cusp of mainstream adoption. We see it every day in the explosive growth of our mobile AIM traffic. The wireless industry is focused on bringing additional rich media experiences and a new generation of interactive services to the mobile consumer, and we are committed to being a leader in that arena.”

AOL Wireless Division now includes services like AOL Mobile, Tegic, and Wildseed and would be expanding its services to mobile users with various software solutions, communications and content services supported by the top wireless carriers and handset manufacturers.