Microsoft quietly bought Double Labs, developer of popular Android app Echo Notification Lockscreen
Microsoft buys Android Echo Notification Lockscreen — Microsoft has bought a popular Android app called Echo Notification Lockscreen, which lets you personalize what appears on your phone or tablet when it's in lock mode.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second time in 2015 that Microsoft has moved on the Android lock screen: it already launched Picturesque, its second free lock screen replacement app, and the Double Labs purchase now brings an established third-party lock screen with a real user base in-house rather than building one from scratch.
The deal fits a broader acquisition pattern from this period — Sunrise for calendar, MileIQ for mileage tracking, and later SwiftKey for keyboards — where Microsoft buys proven consumer utilities on rival platforms instead of shipping its own. The payoff line came later, when Microsoft began testing Cortana directly on the Android lock screen.
First-order effects
- Double Labs' Echo Notification Lockscreen users now sit under Microsoft ownership, with the app's lock-screen personalization technology absorbed into Microsoft's Android portfolio alongside its own Picturesque app.
Second-order effects
- Independent lock-screen and launcher developers on Android face a competitor that can bundle the acquired technology with Cortana and Microsoft's services for free, pressuring paid or ad-supported rivals in the category.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds through the SwiftKey and Cortana-on-lock-screen moves, Microsoft's mobile strategy is structurally one of acquiring user touchpoints on iOS and Android rather than conceding those surfaces to Google and Apple — building presence where Windows Phone failed to hold it.
The trend: Microsoft's mid-2010s acquisitions show it buying its way onto Android and iOS one consumer surface at a time — keyboard, calendar, mileage, lock screen — rather than relying on its own platform to carry them.