Wheelings & Dealings: Phunware Announces Acquisition of Digby

Phunware, the pioneer of Multiscreen as a Service (MaaS), the first fully integrated services platform that enables brands to engage, manage and monetize their anytime anywhere users worldwide, has acquired Digby to expand multiscreen offerings for indoor and outdoor location based services.

Digby is known for its Localpoint platform. The platform connects digital engagement to the physical world to empower retailers with a turn-key, comprehensive solution for easily deploying the next-generation mobile shopper experience.

The Digby team will transition to Phunware’s Austin headquarters over the next several weeks.

“The acquisition of Digby will dramatically enhance our presence in the retail vertical, immediately add blue chip customers including Cabela’s, Kohls, Catalina Marketing and Hasbro and provide complementary geo-location technology for both indoor and outdoor engagement and monetization alike,” said Alan S. Knitowski, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Phunware, in a statement.

Knitowski said that the Digby Localpoint platform will be integrated in the Location Based Services (LBS) module of the company’s MaaS ‘multiscreen cloud’ platform and will afford unique, contextually relevant, location aware marketing interactions on a one-to-one basis between brands and their global audiences across all market segments

“The acquisition of Localpoint creates a powerful, differentiated platform that will deliver exciting value to companies across many industries,” said David Sikora, founder and CEO of Digby.

Sikora said that the future of multiscreen will be defined by those who understand and embrace the power of fully integrated global solutions across client, server and content to deliver audiences whatever they want, whenever they want it, wherever they are, on their devices and languages of choice, at scale. It’s very exciting that Localpoint will play a significant role in this future.

Last year, Phunware had announced that it acquired TapIt Media Group, a global independent mobile advertising company.

Phunware purchased TapIt for a total purchase price of $23M.