ROK Acquires Blubox

Mobile entertainment company ROK have announced today they’ve acquired data optimisation and compression specialists Blubox Software.

Commenting on the acquisition, Jonathan Kendrick, Chairman of ROK said “Blubox have created the most powerful, user-friendly and original compression technologies for the management of digital imagery and data files that we have yet seen and, with our core interest being in mobile phone applications, we know there is a massive potential, worldwide, for this technology in the mobile phone space in addition to, and in conjunction with, the online service.”

If you’ve never heard of Blubox before, here’s the scoop. They’ve got technology that typically compressed JPEG images by about 80% – which means you can upload those pics faster from your phone, and use less data in the process. They’ve also got a nifty PC application that allows you to manage, encrypt, upload and compress your photos.

The implications for this sort of technology being used on mobiles is potentially huge. Even though phones nowadays are coming with increasing amounts of storage, the resolution of digital cameras on mobiles is also increasing – so space is still at a premium. Factor in the average £3/meg data charge, and you could quite easily splash a tenner just uploading a handful of photos. By reducing the file size by up to 80%, you could benefit from less memory usage, faster upload and splash a lot less cash on getting the photos up to your favourite photo website, like Flickr.