{"id":29173,"date":"2013-01-03T09:07:47","date_gmt":"2013-01-03T07:07:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=29173"},"modified":"2013-01-03T13:14:24","modified_gmt":"2013-01-03T11:14:24","slug":"microsoft-acquires-home-technology-start-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/software\/29173\/microsoft-acquires-home-technology-start-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft acquires home technology start-up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft Corp<\/a> bought start-up id8 Group R2 Studios Inc<\/a> as it looks to expand further in technology focused on the home and entertainment, a person familiar with the situation said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

id8 Group R2 Studios was started in 2011 by Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor Blake Krikorian<\/a>. It recently launched a Google Android<\/a> application to allow users to control home heating and lighting systems from smartphones.<\/p>\n

Krikorian’s Sling Media – which was sold to EchoStar Communications in 2007 – made the “Slingbox” for watching TV on computers.<\/p>\n

Krikorian will join Microsoft with a small team, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported the acquisition earlier on Wednesday. Microsoft also purchased some patents owned by the start-up related to controlling electronic devices, the newspaper added.<\/p>\n

Krikorian and a Microsoft spokesman declined to comment.<\/p>\n

Krikorian resigned from Amazon.com Inc<\/a>‘s board in late December after about a year and a half as a director at the company, the Internet’s largest retailer.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/h3>\n

Microsoft Surface, Windows 8 in focus<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Slow adoption for Windows 8?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Microsoft sees 22% loss in profit<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Microsoft Surface takes Apple head-on in price<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Microsoft Corp bought start-up id8 Group R2 Studios Inc as it looks to expand further in technology focused on the home and entertainment, a person familiar with the situation said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":20606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[185,25,4931,169],"class_list":["post-29173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software","tag-acquisition","tag-active","tag-id8-group-r2-studios-inc","tag-microsoft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29173"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29181,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29173\/revisions\/29181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}