Myriad Group, whose software, including browsers, messaging, Java, user interfaces and middleware, is installed in over 2 billion phones, has acquired the brand, technology and 17 employees of privately-held Xumii, a provider of mobile social networking services based in San Mateo, California and Sydney, Australia. Myriad says the transaction is not expected to have a material impact to its revenue or EBITDA for the full fiscal 2009.

“Xumii was the first software developer to combine social networks and instant messaging into a seamless mobile experience,” says Myriad CEO, Simon Wilkinson. “We are delighted that this talented team has joined Myriad.”

Myriad notes that over the past year, social networking has emerged as the key application driving consumer adoption of mobile data services. Facebook is leading the way, already reporting 65 million mobile users per month, up from 20 million just eight months ago. Research firm eMarketer forecasts that there will be more than 800 million mobile users of social networks by 2012.

Using loud computing architecture, Xumii integrates a mobile users phone contacts, social networks and instant messaging services into a single social phonebook. Mobile users can then simultaneously access Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Windows Live and other popular Internet services, sending messages, updating status and sharing photos and videos.

The Xumii technology is ideal for mass-market mobile phones, which do not have sufficient processing power, battery life and memory for advanced, always-on data services. Xumii overcomes these shortfalls by moving the bulk of the processing and data storage to its servers – the cloud.