Microsoft Acquires 60 Employees from Surface Duo OS Partner Movial (Updated)
- Paul Thurrott
- Jul 07, 2020
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UPDATE: Microsoft has not acquired Movial, the firm tells me. Here’s a statement:
“Microsoft recently completed an agreement with Movial to hire employees across several offices as part of the company’s efforts to boost Windows and Android development efforts.”
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Sorry for the confusion. Here’s the original post…
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Microsoft has acquired the Finnish firm Movial, which had been working with it on the Android OS that will power Surface Duo.
“We are excited to continue to expand Microsoft’s presence in Romania and would like to welcome these new employees of Microsoft Romania,” Microsoft Romania CEO Violeta Luca told SeeNews.
According to this report, 60 of Movial’s employees will join the Microsoft Devices team and will work out of Iasi, Romania at a facility that will be transformed into the software giant’s fourth research and development center in the region.
The report also notes that Movial was founded in 2001 in Helsinki, Finland, and it specializes in “mobile and embedded devices, with expertise in multimedia and communications systems, and capable in OS, driver and application layers.”
The theory here is that Microsoft is bringing its Android OS development efforts completely in-house, which could further suggest that it is serious about the platform and could be planning further Android-based devices.
Surface Duo is expected to launch in the coming weeks and be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC, 6 GB of RAM, and 64/128/256 GB of storage, depending on configuration. But the big news is its dual-display design, which features two identical 5.6-inch AMOLED panels.