February 10, 2006 – Getty Images, the Seattle-based stock image powerhouse, has purchased iStockphoto, the royalty free image community, for $50 million (USD). The deal will help Getty compete with other fast growing royalty free and rights managed stock photography companies like Jupitermedia, who acquired Stockxpert and Stock.xchng, in January of this year.
Getty Images can certainly afford to be competitive. On January 26th Getty Images released their 4th quarter results for 2005, reporting the greatest earnings in the history of the company, according to founder and CEO Jonathan Klein. That growth includes a 48 percent increase in net income totaling US$42.5 million. The fourth quarter alone saw a revenue growth of 14.6 percent to US$185.8 million.
