Juniper buys smartphone securer for $70 million

Juniper Networks this week announced it is obtaining privately held SMobile Systems, a developer of security program for smartphones and tablets, for $70 million in funds.

SMobile’s products are designed to protect devices walking on Android, Apple iOS, Symbian, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile operating systems from viruses, adware, identity theft and other threats. The program also provides parental and enterprise controls.

Juniper will add the SMobile program to its Junos Pulse program platform for smartphones, tablets, netbooks and notebooks.

Junos Pulse is intended to bring integrated connectivity, security and application acceleration to those devices, and the addition of SMobile will facilitate a secure mobile Web experience, Juniper says.

Citing information from Infonetics Research, Juniper says the mobile client security market will be over $1 billion by 2014.

Juniper expects to close the acquisition within days. Thirty SMobile employees will transition to Juniper. SMobile CEO Neil Book and CTO Daniel Hoffman will document in to Juniper’s Access and Acceleration business unit, headed by Vice President and General Manager Sanjay Beri.