Monday, October 26, 2009

3M Invests $6.5Mil in Artificial Life


3M now stands for Minnesota Mobile Marketing and the company's New Ventures arm is buying 6,447,491 shares in LA/Hong Kong based Artificial Life (ALIF) at a price of a $1 each. OK, the first part of that statement isn't true, but the announcement today, that 3M is taking 10% of the mobile marketing games company, does seem to indicate that the Maplewood, MN conglomerate believes mobile marketing is mission critical for the company going forward. The investment is part of a broader alliance between the companies which will focus on the following areas:
  • General mobile and broadband applications and technologies
  • Digital Watermarking
  • Virtual Reconstruction of 2D and 3D Objects
  • Augmented Reality
  • 3D Image processing
  • Object recognition
  • Mobile Healthcare and Diabetes Solutions
  • Mobile Marketing and M-Commerce Platform
This list indicates to me that Artificial Life is in the process of broadening the scope of its mobile marketing remit. Not a bad plan, frankly. Given the current glut of content plays and cluttered distribution channels, I think mobile marketing currently represents the biggest opportunity in mobile. The other really good news here for Artificial Life is that this investment bails them out of an uncomfortable cash position... at last check they had under $2mil in the bank (yikes!). Clearly the markets like it, as Artificial Life's stock is up over 20% today in early trading. But let's get to the most important question... so, what does a mobile Post-it note look like?

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