Intel is taking further steps in serious mobile development and has now taken over appMobi's HTML5 development tools and build system, as well as the engineers behind them. The Pennsylvania-based start-up offers a cloud platform for developing browser applications that include features such as authentication, touch-to-buy, push messages, user behaviour analyses and automatic app updating. The two parties haven't disclosed the financial details of the take-over.

appMobi will continue to exist as an independent company and will now focus exclusively on the existing commercial cloud service. Intel will integrate the acquired technologies into a tool suite for app developers that the company is currently putting together. Despite the take-over, the app suite is to remain available to use free of charge to developers who have registered on Intel's developer web site.

At the centre of the now acquired appMobi technologies is jQ.Mobi, a JavaScript framework that is intended for developing apps for systems with a WebKit-based browser such as Android, iOS or the recent BlackBerry OS versions, and also Opera. The framework consists of a search engine for selectors, a UI library and various plugins. Further acquisitions include XDK IDE, PhoneGap XDK, GameDev XDK, the jqUI framework, an HTML5 canvas accelerator, the Moebius web browser, as well as testing and debugging tools.

(djwm)