[Techtaffy Newsdesk]

Opera Software has acquired Skyfire Labs. The acquisition price includes a mix of cash and stock, with an upfront consideration of $50 million (including US$8 million of cash on the Skyfire balance sheet) and performance based earn-out payments over three years, including $26 million in cash held in escrow and funded upfront, that can bring the total deal size to $155 million.

Skyfire, headquartered in Mountain View, California, is known for its Rocket Optimizer software. This allows mobile operators to leverage cloud computing to optimize virtually any video and other multimedia on crowded cell towers, including 3G and 4G LTE networks. Rocket Optimizer on average provides mobile networks a 60 percent boost in capacity by reducing the size of video and other multimedia content as needed to fit the available bandwidth.

Skyfire also offers Skyfire Horizon, a mobile browser extension and toolbar platform that allows users to personalize their smartphone browser.

Skyfire currently counts three large U.S. mobile operators as customers for its Rocket Optimizer and Skyfire Horizon solutions, and is in trials with ten other operators around the world.

After the deal closes, Jeffrey Glueck, CEO of Skyfire, will assume the role of EVP of the Operator Business for Opera, as well as CEO of Skyfire, and will oversee the joint offerings for Opera across Opera Mini co-brand solutions for Operators and Skyfire’s product lines.

Skyfire will remain an independent entity as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Opera, and will continue to develop and support the Skyfire browser.

The Opera acquisition of Skyfire is expected to close before March 15, 2013.

[Image courtesy: Skyfire]