Macromedia is to acquire Mobile Innovation, a privately-held design and integration house in the UK with around 50 staff, for an undisclosed sum. What makes this deal noteworthy is that Mobile Innovation designs phones as well as user interfaces. It's an integrator, and Tier One handset manufacturers devolve a lot of design decisions to MI.
It's similar to Apple's relationship with Tony Fadell's design shop - which created the iPod - only on a larger scale. MI declines to mention which companies it works with because of confidentiality agreements with phone OEMs, and an opaque web site gives little clues as to what it really does. But it's well known amongst industry insiders that Mobile Innovation was responsible for the Nokia 9300 Communicator design and other high-end Symbian smart phones, Nokia's Series 90 user interface, and Hildon, the GUI for Nokia's Linux tablet. Both of the founders, CEO Jonathan Sulenski and CTO Matt Millar came from Symbian with Millar's roots reaching back to Psion and the Series 5 PDA.
News source: The Register
