Apple's Anobit Acquisition Reportedly Cost $500 Million

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Apple has bought Israel's Anobit, a maker of flash storage technology, for up to $500 million, the Calcalist financial daily reported on Tuesday.

The newspaper said Anobit's management was in the process of gathering its staff to formally announce the acquisition by Apple.

Last week Calcalist had reported that Apple was in advanced talks to buy Anobit for $400-$500 million.

In addition to the acquisition, Apple will also open a research and development centre in Israel, its first outside the United States, Calcalist said.

Anobit and Apple were not available for comment.

Anobit has developed a chip that enhances flash drive performance through signal processing. The chip is already incorporated in Apple devices such as the iPhone, iPad and the MacBook Air.

Last week, Calcalist said Apple was interested in Anobit's technology to increase and enhance the memory volume and performance of its devices. The chip may as much as double the memory volume in the new iPads and MacBooks.

(Reporting by Steven Scheer; Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)

Related on HuffPost:

Read the whole story: Reuters

Comments

[larmarch5]

11:10 AM on 12/25/2011

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[larmarch5]

11:12 AM on 12/25/2011

OK tried the "torn page" icon on ie9. Fixing HPs problems is like having to flush the toilet to make toast.

[LightShadow62]

02:06 AM on 12/21/2011

For this kind of money you can bet that Apple is buying another patent that they will try to use to shut down the competition.

[JohnTheMac]

09:18 AM on 12/21/2011

In a free market, ANYONE can buy a company, a company's patents, or even individual's services (employment).
If there's an advantage in some technique that company patented, then Apple gets that advantage.
If someone else tries to copy that advantage, and doesn't pay for a license, they get an invitation to court.
I'm sure Samsung, Microsoft, and Motorola are all familiar with this playing field, right?

[jsgaetano]

12:35 AM on 12/21/2011

More "innovation", huh?

[JohnTheMac]

09:19 AM on 12/21/2011

I would have to agree, it is.

[ResearchtheFacts]

11:47 PM on 12/20/2011

Apple gets new acquisition http://www.toycountry.com/store/Smart-Tablet-Basic-Fisher-Price-Baby-Toddler-Preschool-Toddler-Baby-Toys-Games-Learning-Activities-by-Mattel.html the GUI is a little more 21st century!

[jsgaetano]

12:36 AM on 12/21/2011

OMG, Apple is so innovative!

[jflorish]

06:54 PM on 12/20/2011

Looks like a good buy for Apple, this will fit right into their business plans. They seem to make good acquisitions.

[bryanzth]

06:21 PM on 12/20/2011

Yep, Apple has gone away from HDs to chip memory. Sooner or later no more HDs in local machines, and one day no more HDs in servers.

And so will go all the copycats, too.

BZ.

[behavingbadly]

06:30 PM on 12/20/2011

SSD's have been available as expensive alternatives to HDDs from many PC manufacturers for a long time. Apple is actually LATE to that party.

[bryanzth]

06:42 PM on 12/20/2011

Yeh, give me a timeline.

BZ.

[theveggiedude]

09:34 PM on 12/20/2011

The same can be true of USB. Before iMac, having USB was an available addon to PC's, but Intel's Andy Grove credits Apple for making USB mainstream. It's all about how things are implemented - and usually, because Apple owns the entire widget from software to hardware, they can make change. By getting rid of legacy items and peripherals, it forced people to adopt USB. The rest of the industry followed later (like throwing away floppy disks 5 years after the fact).

People have been crying about no USB on iPad. That's the equivalent of crying about no floppy drive on the iMac in 1998. In both cases, it was suppose to doom the newly introduced Apple product.

[jflorish]

06:52 PM on 12/20/2011

I thought they had pretty much eliminates HDs already ..... I guess its still around in some places.

[divitius]

04:03 PM on 12/20/2011

iVay!

[basenji]

03:59 PM on 12/20/2011

Great. Now we can look forward to being tracked by spyware.

[Mister Grumpy]

02:51 PM on 12/20/2011

Great. More jobs being exported. How big will Apples tax credit for creating jobs be this year?

[bryanzth]

06:22 PM on 12/20/2011

Well, some people could move to Israel...

Me, I'm moving elsewhere. The heck with North America, hahaha!

BZ.

[JohnTheMac]

07:14 AM on 12/22/2011

They paid 8 billion in taxes this year, how about you?

[Yank in France]

02:39 PM on 12/20/2011

After my last unsuccessful post ("undefined"), I have a suggestion for the Huffington Post: Perhaps you should buy an Israeli IT company to resolve your numerous computer problems on this site?!

[Mister Grumpy]

02:55 PM on 12/20/2011

They already do. The Indians are working out just fine I'm sure. Thanks for your input.

[Yank in France]

03:03 PM on 12/20/2011

You are "sure" of what? That the HP IT team is working "fine"?!!

If that is the case, please tell me what constitutes an utter disaster!!!

[bryanzth]

06:24 PM on 12/20/2011

Eh, move to Israel! The weather is nicer there!

BZ.

[jsgaetano]

12:39 AM on 12/21/2011

My account has been screwed up for over a year. I used to complain about it, but now it seems like they just ignore problems.

[Yank in France]

03:31 AM on 12/21/2011

I like the HP, even if the level of discussion on these threads leaves something to be desired. Still, there are enough people here that we can pick and choose decent conversations.

But I noticed a comment in the French press according to which HP does NOT pay the writers of these articles/dispatches, which means that they are basically living off the already profit lean news media outlets.

So, now I wonder if they pay their IT people? Assuming they pay them something albeit very little, that would explain the many problems they are having with their web sidte.

Still, I don't understand how they can allow certain people to become "moderators" who then proceed to remove comments solely for their political content!

But when we look at their "Guidelines", we also see something very CULT LIKE when they say attacks on public figures are NOT allow and constitute reason for the deletion of posts and even the cancellation of a poster's participation on these threads. There is something very, very WEIRD about this organization...

[Yank in France]

02:37 PM on 12/20/2011

undefined

[jsgaetano]

12:40 AM on 12/21/2011

My account was doing that all day. Seems to have stopped a while ago. Once again, it seems the problem is on their end, not on mine.

[larmarch5]

11:15 AM on 12/25/2011

I finally clicked the "compatibility" icon on the top bar of IE9. It's the torn page icon. Another example of "having to flush the toilet to make toast" technology.

[Steven Travis]

01:11 PM on 12/20/2011

So let's see:

- Apple is building their next processor (the A6) at a fab not related to Samsung
- Apple is bought a flash memory manufacturer so that they don't have to buy them from Samsung
- Apple is buying displays from Sanyo and others (but not Samsung).

Sounds to me that Samsung is losing some serious business. Of course we all knew this couldn't last. You can't be a supplier and a competitor to your customers - you know that whole conflict of interest thing.

[bryanzth]

06:25 PM on 12/20/2011

Aha! I didn't think of that with all this Samsung kerfuffel. Being as I am merely a user, not a techie, what you write fits nicely with this story.

BZ.

[jflorish]

06:53 PM on 12/20/2011

Exactly, plus they don't want to share business ideas with competitors either, and if they build their internal products then its a give away on what they are planning on doing.

[Dalton Perry]

11:25 AM on 12/20/2011

And when they release their next product using the technology, they will claim they invented it.

[bryanzth]

06:26 PM on 12/20/2011

The Greeks and Romans invented the Tablet. Yeah, they used wax, but so did Edison originally.

BZ.

[jsgaetano]

12:42 AM on 12/21/2011

Yeah, but according to the Apple Cultists, the Greeks and Romans were copying from Apple.

[PizzaGuy1]

10:11 AM on 12/20/2011

That's the way, Apple. Never innovate when you can buy patents and the company that holds them.

[oldsquare]

02:24 PM on 12/20/2011

I know you meant your comment as a snide anti-Apple remark, but most profitable companies try and buy technology rather than develop when possible. Unfortunately, innovation, as you refer to it, is an overhead cost with little contribution to the bottom line in the near term. As such it reduces profits or increases costs, either which in today's world puts the company at a competitive disadvantage. Apple is just exercising smart business sense, ideally preferred or not.

[PizzaGuy1]

02:58 PM on 12/20/2011

I do understand that. Apple, however, touts it's innovation as it's mantra, and as I see it you can't have it both ways.

[jsgaetano]

12:43 AM on 12/21/2011

Any good ideas or tech Apple has was created outside of Apple. They spend less on R&D than any other major tech company.

[JohnTheMac]

04:46 PM on 12/20/2011

They just rewarded a company for innovation in a way nearly identical as though the whole company worked for them. They paid them.
So Apple actually rewarded innovation.
Sammy, Nok, Microsoft, etc, could have paid $10 million more, or $20 million more, and rewarded this company for it's innovation even more. Why didn't they?

[jsgaetano]

12:44 AM on 12/21/2011

Why innovate, when you can just buy innovation?

[One Last Time]

09:45 AM on 12/20/2011

There goes one of Samsungs biggest customers. Everyone saw this one coming.

[ResearchtheFacts]

01:00 PM on 12/20/2011

Good riddance, Samsung is light years ahead of Apple anyway. This will cut down on the bogus lawsuits. Apple is still skirting past the biggest problem they have "that ridiculous, severely dated GUI."

[One Last Time]

01:05 PM on 12/20/2011

Apple is a Samsung's 2nd largest customer. I don't believe shareholders will like the lost of nearly $1B in revenue. But your comment seems more based on a_hatred of Apple than Samsung's 2012 revenue. So I will leave you to your_hate.

[oldsquare]

02:27 PM on 12/20/2011

Have you never noticed that Apple product owners don't feel the need to berate competitors' products in order to feel satisfied with their purchase and use of the respective iDevice?