Cheetah Mobile (CA €570m), the third-largest developer of Android applications, acquired News Republic, a Bordeaux-based company specializing in media content aggregation, for 57 million dollars this summer.
The creation of Mobiles Republic by Gilles Raymond (already at the origin of In Fusio, publisher of games on mobile) dates back to 2008. The application, renamed News Republic in 2014, offers mobile users access to 1650 sources of information (media partners mainly such as AFP, Al Jazeera, BBC, Bloomberg, CNN, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, L’Express but also ITespresso.fr or Silicon.fr). This makes it possible to build a monitoring tool based on its interests, like a competitor like the American Flipboard.
For Cheetah Mobile, this acquisition allows it to confirm its development in content and advertising. Founded in 2010 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange, the Chinese, which has nearly $570 million in sales, is originally a specialist in the supply of utility applications, such as the energy-saving Battery Doctor or the «cleaner» content of Android smartphones, Clean Master.
For News Republic, which is a beneficiary in France but still running a deficit in the United States and Asia, Cheetah Mobile will open the doors of China and its hundreds of millions of users. The rule of any entrepreneur…
For more information :
L’Usine Digitale 25 août 2016
Itespresso 3 août 2016
Les Echos 10 août 2016