A Year Ago: Motorola buy will spur wireless devices

Motorola has announced plans to buy Starfish Software. The acquisition could accelerate development of wireless devices in the enterprise. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Starfish is the developer of the TrueSync -- software that synchronises data between Franklin's hugely successful Rex credit card-sized PDA and PCs. The four-year-old company's chairman and CEO is Philippe Kahn, former boss of Borland, who will join the management team.

In a statement, Motorola says it intends to "create a new generation of wireless devices that exchange information with each other as well as with a wide array of information sources, including PCs, the Internet and wireless service providers."

The devices will not be limited to conventional PDAs but also hybrid communications/computing devices like smart phones and pagers.