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 third lock-screen move Microsoft has made in 2015 alone: after launching its own free replacement app, Picturesque in February, it has now quietly bought Double Labs, whose Echo Notification Lockscreen is one of the more popular Android lock-screen personalizers. The acquisition adds an installed user base and a proven product rather than starting from zero.
The deal sits inside a broader buying spree aimed at putting Microsoft's software on phones it does not make — the same quarter it picked up calendar startup Sunrise, with the keyboard developer SwiftKey to follow in 2016. Apple has run the identical playbook quietly, as with its Dryft keyboard purchase earlier that year.
First-order effects
- Double Labs' team and the Echo Notification Lockscreen app now belong to Microsoft, giving the company a popular, already-installed Android lock-screen product to fold into its own mobile portfolio alongside Picturesque.
Second-order effects
- A lock screen is the most valuable real estate on a phone, so owning Echo positions Microsoft to push its assistant onto that surface — which is exactly where its later Cortana lock-screen test on Android landed, validating the acquisition as infrastructure for its assistant strategy.
- Google faces Microsoft embedding increasingly core services (keyboards, calendars, lock screens) deeper into Android itself, pressuring the platform owner to respond either natively or through its own tuck-in acquisitions.
Third-order effects
- If the SwiftKey-and-Sunrise pattern holds, Microsoft's mobile strategy consolidates around acquiring category-leading cross-platform utilities instead of shipping first-party apps, making small independent Android developers prime acquisition targets and raising the price floor for the whole category.
The trend: Platform owners are quietly acquiring independent mobile utility makers to colonize each other's operating systems, turning the lock screen, keyboard, and calendar into contested surfaces rather than settled defaults.