Like celebrity deaths , Apple acquisitions seem to come in clumps . Last calendar month the troupe acquired two mapping - associate companies , LocationaryandHopStop ; on Thursday , Cupertino flux it up by snag a maker of low - free energy computer chips , Passif Semiconductor . News of the deal was firstreported and sustain by formerWall Street Journalwriter Jessica Lessin .
As usual , Apple was closemouthed about its rationality for the skill , but it ’s not hard to figure out why it pluck up the low Silicon Valley - base company , which was founded by a pair of Ph.D. students from the University of California , Berkeley . Clearly , though , Apple has deem it increasingly important to control the key technologies that go into its products — case in point , its 2008 acquisition of PA Semi , which enable Apple to train its own central processor for product like the iPhone , iPad , and Apple TV .
Along with processor , wireless technology is the other key expanse on which Apple has focused ; just await at its attempts to simplify and thin down on the number of wires for its equipment using technologies like AirPlay , and its former acceptance of Wi - Fi . More recently , there have been report card that users may shortly be able to practice Bluetoothto configure their Apple TV . And former senior vice president Bob Mansfield , who was recently detailed to work on special projects for Tim Cook , waslast year put in charge of a Technologies division work specifically on semiconductors and wireless .
That connectivity between equipment is only going to become more important with the ascension of Bluetooth LE ( low energy ) , the part of the Bluetooth 4.0 monetary standard that ’s targeted at low - power devices like those used for physical fitness , security measure , and healthcare . Even if you set aside long - running hearsay of Apple ’s raid into wearable computing , having a bet in this engineering is important for the company ’s existing mobile Cartesian product , which , more and more , are interacting with smartwatches , fitness devices , and the like . The forthcoming Io 7 bears this out : It ’s due toinclude a technology forebode iBeacons , which allows machine to pull in data such as positioning via Bluetooth LE .
The humbled - energy part of the spec is particularly important , since anybody who ’s used almost any Bluetooth accessary with their iPhone can attest to its core on bottom - melody assault and battery life . Apple , like any other ship’s company in the mobile machine market , is always essay to wring more longevity out of its products ; lately , that ’s been in the form of more and more intelligence power management . With control over both the hardware and the software , Apple has the potential drop to squeeze even more operation optimisation out of these types of lotion .
And there is , of course of instruction , the aforementioned mythologic smartwatch . A power - efficient Bluetooth LE chip would be of primary grandness to such a equipment , where shelling life is at a premium . ( Right now , for object lesson , I ’ve stick two wearable devices , a Fitbit Flex and a Pebble , each of which lasts about a week between recharges — to me , that ’s the desolate minimum for a twist that you ’re going to practice every day . )
Passif ’s acquirement may not be the last for Apple in the nigh term ; CEO Tim Cooksaid at the D11 conference in May , before news program of the localisation - link acquisitions came to luminance , that the company had already acquired nine company in 2013 , and that it was still shopping for talent . allow ’s just desire it ’s getting the bulk - pricing mountain .
