Razer acquires mobile phone startup Nextbit

 

Razer phones anyone?

US-based PC gaming peripheral company and more recently, laptop maker Razer has reportedly acquired Nextbit, a startup that last year released the very first cloud oriented phone, the Nextbit Robin.

Nextbit will reportedly be operating as an independent division within Razer and would do “exactly what we’ve been doing all along, only bigger and better,” said Razers co-founder and CEO, Min-Liang Tan to TechCrunch. They also indicated that the Nextbit brand will be sticking around as Razer might have difficulties in breaking into the smartphone market as Motorolla would most likely have trademarks on their “Razr” brand which sounds dangerously close to Razer.

As a result of the acquisition, Razer is halting sales of the Nextbit Robin but promises full support for six more months to the people who bought the phone. The acquisition brings up interesting ideas  which involve a Razer built Nextbit phone, or Nextbit software in Razer devices like the Razer blade and the Razer Blade Pro respectively.

Nextbit is the startup company that produced the Nextbit Robin, a phone that “integrated onboard storage with the cloud.” It seamlessly backs up your phones applications, photos, and videos and intelligently archives the stuff that you aren’t using. The phone was created to ensure that users would never run out of storage as its storage device was the cloud.This acquisition is actually the second time that Razer has bought an android company as in 2015, the gaming firm bought android console maker Ouya. Last year, Razer also bought THX, an audio/video company.