Cloud Storage Start-Up Zecter Acquired by Motorola Mobility

Motorola Mobility, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Motorola, Inc. has acquired Zecter, Inc., a start-up with synchronization and streaming technologies for on-demand digital media consumption.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Zecter’s solutions connect users to their content seamlessly and instantaneously, giving them on-the-go access to music, video, photos and documents from their smartphones, tablets, PCs and web-portals.

Zecter currently has two products available:

ZumoDrive, for cloud-based content sync, access and sharing; and
ZumoCast, for personal media streaming to any device. Both products use innovative virtual file system technologies to make any personal content instantly available even if it is not stored locally.

Zecter will further enhance Motorola Mobility’s mobile content experience and MOTOBLUR service offering by enabling consumers to enjoy their digital content across their mobile devices, wherever they are. Motorola Mobility will integrate Zecter’s wireless syncing, desktop integration, video transcoding and thin-file retrieval technologies across its device and MOTOBLUR offerings to provide consumers with real-time access to their content.

"Consumers want seamless access to their content and media from wherever they are, while content providers want to ensure that content remains protected and secure," said Christy Wyatt, corporate vice president of software and services, Motorola Mobility. "We believe that Zecter enables that seamless experience with the necessary security measures, and we are delighted to be able to work with this team."

Wyatt added: "Zecter’s robust team brings multi-platform expertise along with compelling solutions for continuous digital media access across multiple platforms. Zecter is an exciting addition to our MOTOBLUR service platform and we welcome their highly skilled personnel to the Motorola Mobility team."

As part of the transition, the distribution of Zecter’s ZumoCast software will be suspended while enhancements are made. Existing ZumoCast users may continue to enjoy the service without interruption. Motorola Mobility will provide regular updates for ZumoCast users as well as future plans for this service. The ZumoDrive solution will be unaffected.

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Silicon Valley start-up Zecter was born in 2007 and founded by people from Amazon and Microsoft. It received $1 million in 2007 and 1.5 million two years later in financial funding, raising founds from Y Combinator, Tandem Entrepreneurs and Sherpalo Ventures.

For ZumoDrive was signed a partnership with HP to power HP’s new CloudDrive software on its HP Mini netbooks starting in January 2010.

This month Motorola Mobility also completed the acquisition of 4Home, a developer of patented software and services that bridge the gap between consumers and today's connected home.