Apple has reportedly made an offer of $280 million to acquire fabless semiconductor company PrimeSense, the Israeli firm that provided the tech behind the original Kinect.

According to local newspaper Calcalist (via Verge), the iPhone maker tabled the bid for the 3D sensing and machine vision technologies specialist following discussions over the embedding of its tech in Apple products.

PrimSense, which was founded in 2005, claims its technology powers more than 20 million devices.

In April, Apple posted its first quarterly drop in profits in ten years. The company made a net profit of $9.5 billion (£6.2b) for its fiscal 2013 second quarter, down from $11.6 billion (£7.6b) a year earlier, while generating record March quarter revenue of $43.6 billion (£28.6b) following jumps in iPhone and iPad sales.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said at the time: "Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software, and services and we are very excited about the products in our pipeline."

In May, Apple said iOS App Store downloads had topped 50 billion. And earlier this month, the company revealed the all-time best selling iPhone and iPad apps.

Posted: Jul 16, 2013 10:52 am
Related Forum: Mobile Devices

Source: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/419301/apple-reportedly-bids-for-firm-behind-kinect-sensor/