SingTel acquires New York’s smart photo aggregator app Pixable for USD26.5M

SingTel today announced that it has acquired 100% of New York City-based Pixable for USD26.5M. The company is known for its smartphone app that prioritises photos on social networks for consumers.

Pixable has created a free web and mobile app that offers users a personalized photo experience created from predictive analytics and artificial intelligence. The technologies analyze users’ interactions and consumption habits to prioritize photos from friends and family. Users are presented with the most interesting photos through feeds such as ‘Top of the Day’ and ‘New Profile Pics’.

More than 4 million users have installed Pixable’s ‘mobile photo inbox’ service via the web, iOS devices and Android devices. The company was founded in 2009.

Allen Lew, CEO Group Digital L!fe, SingTel said: “One of the goals of SingTel Group Digital L!fe team is to develop next generation mobile services that make life easier for our mobile customers.”

“We have developed two significant points of view based on customer insights. Firstly, people are increasingly using photos to share experiences with their friends and relatives. Secondly, our customers want assistance from service providers to prioritise and organise the multiple contacts and content that happen daily in their lives.”

“Pixable’s expertise and customer engagement give us a foundation to go beyond viewing photos to using photos as a way to stimulate simple immersive communication. We will be able to provide a distinctive value-added service to all mobile customers, allowing them to discover and store content, images and their communication history – essentially what matters most from those that are really important to them.”

SingTel plans to introduce more digital services to its 462 million mobile customers in Asia and Africa. In Singapore and Australia, customers can already store and share photos using SingTel’s cloud services.

Mr Inaki Berenguer, CEO of Pixable said: “Communications in the 21st century go beyond text and voice, and more and more, people are sharing mobile photos to communicate: what I ate last night, which concert I went to, who was with me at a party. The worlds of social and photo are converging and that’s why we developed our social photo discovery solution. The size and global reach of the SingTel Group will allow us to expand and bring our solution to more people especially in emerging markets.”

The transaction is subject to certain conditions precedent, including the receipt of applicable third party contractual consents.