Motorola acquires app developer 280 North

US handset vendor Motorola looks set to increase its development of the Android platform with the recent acquisition of software and web application developer 280 North.

Neither company has revealed the purchase price and both have remained almost silent on the acquisition. 280 North is responsible for 280 Slides, a browser-based presentation platform, and Cappuccino, an open source application framework. The company was founded by Francisco Tolmasky, the original author of Objective-J, and a former Apple employee on the team that created MobileSafari and Maps on the iPhone.

Resurgent vendor Motorola owes much of its success to the adoption of the Android platform and the strong performance of its Droid device.

The 280 North acquisition would expand Motorola’s development ecosystem and help the company develop web-based applications and user interface tools for its portfolio of devices.