Apple recently confirmed rumors that it has bought Anobit, an Israel based flash storage developer. The confirmation was made by Steve Downling, Apple’s official spokesperson, to Bloomberg. But Dowling did not elaborate further on the details of the acquisition, including how much the company paid for Anobit.
Apple’s acquisition of Anobit plays into the Cupertino, Ca. company’s hardware goals. Flash storage is an integral part of Apple’s many consumer products – the iPhone, iPad and different iPod models. It is also starting to play a big part in its Macintosh line as it begins migrating from platter-based hard drives to solid state hard drives. For example, the Macbook Air has been employing solid state hard drives for years now. Apple has also started offering SSDs as an optional configuration for many Macintosh laptops.
Anobit is not a very well known flash storage manufacturer, in fact, it doesn’t even have its own manufacturing facilities. But these are not important to Apple. What the company is after is Anobit’s technology, which are flash memory controllers that use a proprietary signal processing that gives a more beneficial effect on the performance, power consumption and longevity of flash memory. Apple has used Anobit in its devices for a number of product generations and acquiring it means getting a lock on the further development of Anobit’s technology. This could mean Apple will now have a hold on the further evolution of flash technology and allow it to further develop flash storage that will meet the specific requirements that Apple needs for the new generation of iOS devices it will produce.
Apple’s acquisition of Anobit can lead to a great partnership.