Samsung Electronics Co. announced that they are acquiring mSpot, Inc., a leading mobile cloud content service provider based in Palo Alto, California.  The acquisition will provide a cloud entertainment experience of music, video and radio services for Samsung device users.

“mSpot shares our vision to bring a best-in-class cloud and streaming entertainment experience to consumers, and they’ve backed it up with innovative technical solutions from a great engineering team,” said TJ Kang, Senior Vice President of Samsung Electronics’ Media Solution Center.

The acquisition will also extend mSpot’s cloud and streaming solutions to a broader base of global entertainment fans. The combination will expand mSpot’s top class cloud and streaming services, while further enhancing Samsung’s mobile and tablet device entertainment offerings.  mSpot’s entertainment services will be a key pre-installed offering on newly announced Samsung mobile devices.

mSpot has a long history with carriers and manufacturers, having provided cloud services even before there were smartphones.  The company’s experience in white-labeling software for many of the OEMs out there gives mSpot a leg up in this evolving industry, and has obviously made them an attractive acquisition target as well.

Though details of the acquisition weren’t disclosed, some are estimating it to be worth 10 billion won (about $8.76 million).

S-Cloud

The consumer cloud is certainly taking off, and Samsung is one manufacturer that’s determined to own as much of the mobility stack as possible.  Its lineup of devices has exploded over the past year, and they’re becoming the perfect portals to distribute Samsung’s bada operating system and other cloud services.  The mSpot acquisition is just another step in the process.

At the Samsung Unpacked event, aside from the Galaxy SIII, people were waiting for Samsung to announce their cloud service, S-Cloud, but alas no S-Cloud was mentioned.  But a different service was mentioned, AllShare, which allows users to share the content of their Samsung device to a tablet, computer, laptop or any other connected device.

Hints have been popping up around another Samsung-cloud partnership this year as well.  At the International CTIA 2012, someone from SugarSync said that Samsung will still be launching S-Cloud by June, and Samsung devices launched after that will come pre-installed with the S-Cloud.  The SugarSync source also stated that S-Cloud was actually a code name and that the service will be named Samsung Cloud by SugarSync. But another representative from SugarSync retracted their earlier announcement, stating that what they said was misconstrued and that SugarSync is not the S-Cloud.  Looks like we’ll just have to wait for Samsung’s official announcement on the matter.