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MobUI , a company founded by former Action Engine employees, has decided to buy the assets of its former employer to create applications and mobile Web experiences on new mobile platforms, such as the iPhone and Android. In August, Action Engine mysteriously laid off its employees and closed its doors, saying it was seeking buyers for its mobile platform, which allowed applications to get ported to multiple platforms, such as Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Java and Brew. Before Action Engine started having issues, John Burry left the company to start MobUI with the mission to help media companies quickly build apps and mobile experiences on even newer platforms, such as the iPhone. Burry, who is MobUI's CEO, said his company grew quickly gaining the two customers in the first two weeks. But Burry said they realized they weren't going to be able to focus on a single platform—that companies who built something for the iPhone would want to expand to other platforms. Burry: "We purchased Action Engine because we had a dependency on it." That included one of MobUI's early customers, which was also using Action Engine. MobUI bought Action Engine's assets on Sept. 15, and hired a core set of engineers in order to keep the platform going. MobUI raises funding: To fund the company's beginnings and buy Action Engine, Burry said they raised an undisclosed amount of capital from GlobalNET Mobile Solutions , a wireless application services provider in Latin America, which is also one of MobUI's first customers. Burry said GobalNET is interested in both companies so it can better expand internationally in the U.S., Asia and Europe. MobUI can be pronounced "Mob-U.I." or "Mo-BUI." Explaining Action Engine's demise: Action Engine's sudden closure wasn't as mysterious as you would think, Burry said. The company, which had a long list of big-name customers, such as AOL ( NYSE: TWX ), The Wall Street Journal.com, MarketWatch...

MocoNews has learned that mobile games developer Hands-On Mobile is shedding its European game business four years after acquiring the company. This division, which also covers the Middle East and Africa, will be transferred to an expanded Connect 2 Media , a cross-platform game developer. The business goes right back into the hands of Eric Hobson, CEO of Connect 2 Media, who originally sold the earlier incarnation of the division, Blue Beck Media, to Hands-On four years ago. He left Hands-On earlier this year to join Connect 2 Media. Hands-On will retain a minority stake in the operation, which at the same time is receiving a $6.7 million investment from Acuity. Hands-On injected some cash into the deal, as well, but it was minimal since the deal was mostly pegged around the transfer of its EMEA assets. This follows Hands-On's sale of its Korean division to EA less than two months ago for $29 million in cash. Niccolo de Masi , president of Hands-On, explained the move in an interview today: "We've been looking at how we can bulk up our distributing ability in EMEA for a while now." The company had to buy or build in order to achieve that and thinks it's getting both with this deal. By "rolling ourselves into one vehicle," the company's opportunity will grow substantially by getting more boots on the ground and combining each of the parties' areas of expertise across multiple platforms. "We've effectively taken a smaller stake in a much larger entity… We don't consider ourselves to be selling anything to be honest." Hands-On wouldn't disclose how much of a share it gets in the bigger company, but said it retains all the rights that come with being a minority shareholder. Acuity and Connect 2 Media will also be minority shareholders in the newly merged company, leaving no party with a majority share . Hands-On plans to increase its equity in the company through continued investment, De Masi said, adding that...

Verizon Wireless's ( NYSE: VZ ) $28.1 billion acquisition of Alltel will create the largest U.S. wireless carrier, but at the same time, it will eliminate one of the most innovative carriers in the country, which begs the question: Is Verizon buying Alltel for its towers and subscribers, or also for its forward-looking approach to the market? As a regional carrier, Alltel may only serve 13 million subscribers in limited territories, but that gives the company a level of comfort and flexibility to quickly roll-out new services without the constraints larger carriers face. It doesn't worry that millions of users will start using a new service overnight that crash the network, and it doesn't have to train as many customer-service and retail representatives every time it launches a new phone or application. So, the concern is that once apart of Verizon this attitude will fade. Some of it probably will, but if the merger gains regulatory approval, will companies lose an important petri dish, or gain a larger one? As an example, Alltel was Seattle-based Ontela first customer. CEO Dan Shapiro said he heard about the potential merger yesterday while in a board meeting. Immediately, the topic of conversation focused on how it would affect the industry. "There's two different thoughts," he said. "There's the conventional wisdom that the big carrier eats smaller carriers, and all good things come to the end," he said. But they came up with a second scenario: "They are buying a hard asset with towers and subscribers—that's 80 percent of the truth. Another piece, is that Alltel has been a pioneer that experiments with the way to bring value to its subscribers, outside of text and voice services, and that's valuable. They have a full-time business development person in Seattle to make sure that everything gets back to Little Rock. I strongly suspect that Verizon sees that culture of innovation and that skill-set as a way to maximize...

It's a big news day for Vodafone ( NYSE: VOD ). First, it announced its CEO Arun Sarin will step down and then it reported stellar earnings . Now, there's also a report by the Financial Times that quotes multiple sources as saying that Vodafone will make several acquisitions as a way to beef up its mobile Internet services. The spending spree started this month when Vodafone agreed to pay $48.7 million for Zyb, a Danish social networking company. The article reported that the scale of acquisitions will remain relatively small, and that valuations will be similar to Zyb, according to two people familiar with the situation. Leading Vodafone's new Internet services group is Pieter Knook, who recently left Microsoft's ( NSDQ: MSFT ) Windows Mobile division. The article laid a pretty compelling argument for why Vodafone should be aggressively pursuing this strategy. It noted both Nokia ( NYSE: NOK ), which is midway through launching its own services initiative called Ovi, and Google ( NSDQ: GOOG ), which is also beefing up its mobile stragedy with a several pronged approach. There's additional incentive in the form of revenues. The company reported today that year-end data revenues are up 35.7 percent to $4.3 billion, rising from $2.7 billion a year ago. If this is the case, the next logical question to ask is what will Vodafone buy? Will it follow Nokia's lead by purchasing a mapping company, like Navteq, or a media-sharing company such as Nokia's purchase of Twango? Or will it go in a slightly different direction, and go head-to-head with Google, to play in the mobile search and advertising business? Either way, there's plenty of companies to buy, so I'm sure Vodafone will be busy evaluating its options. Register for our EconAds seminar , June 3rd, at the New World Stages in New York City. Covering the economics of online advertising.