The deal was signed for the acquisition of PrimeSense by Apple. Based in Israel, the startup is best known for being the origin of the Kinect Xbox 360 from Microsoft.
An Apple spokesperson confirmed to AllThingsD that Apple has bought PrimeSense. The Israeli business daily Calcalist had already raised the possibility of such redemption this summer before suggesting it a few days ago that an agreement had been finalized. AllThingsD had put a caveat stating that the case had not yet been concluded.
Israeli financial daily, Globes (competitor of Calcalist), wrote that negotiations between Apple and PrimeSense was led on Friday with an agreement for an amount between 300 and 350 million.
The door-talking Apple did not allude to the sum at stake. It merely confirmed that PrimeSense is indeed fallen into the Apple fold and did not enter into the details:
"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our objectives or plans."
Israel based PrimeSense owes its fame to its collaboration with Microsoft and the integration of its 3D technology in the Kinect sensor for Xbox 360 game. PrimeSense did not participate in the development of the new Kinect for Xbox One. Microsoft has developed its own solution.
Today, PrimeSense is mostly presented as a specialist of 3D chips and 3D sensing technology used by over 24 million devices worldwide. In particular, it is integrated in smartphones and tablets sensors.
This suggests that Apple has some ideas in mind for its iOS devices and maybe the iPhone 6. It will be recalled that the redemption of Authentec for $355 million that was made following a year later the release of the iPhone 5s with the integration of a fingerprint sensor.
As mentioned in our columns, Apple might be interested in the next generation of SoC PrimeSense with improved detection techniques including 3D multimodal and miniaturization algorithms.
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