Apple confirms buying PrimeSense, but How does it plan to use it?

By Darshik Jariwala - November, 25th 2013

After much speculation, Apple finally confirmed its deal with the Israeli company PrimeSense. PrimeSense mainly focuses on the 3-D Sensor technology. Apple, confirmed the deal with the media with the same line that it uses after signing every deal, Apple spokesperson said, “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plan“. AllThingsD reports that Apple inked the deal for about $360 million. The news about this deal was first reported back in July, by Israeli news publisher Calcalist.

PrimeSense first earned fame and recognition for their work when they started developing the Motion sensor for Microsoft’s gaming device (Xbox) which which we now know as Kinect. Kinect allows users to interact with the game without touching the device, it interacts with the user based on the their body gestures and voice commands. Microsoft initially used motion sensors provided by PrimeSense but now uses their own sensor technology.

Anyway, Although Apple keeps buying these “smaller technology companies“, it has never till date in its long history of buyouts, revealed the purpose behind it. By the time they usually start deploying the respective technologies in their devices, most people have to jog their memories to recollect details about the deal. For instance, Apple bought Siri sometime in April-May 2010 but Siri was first seen in iPhone 4S released in the fall of 2011. Similarly, Apple bought the Fingerprint Scanner company AuthenTec in July last year, which is a few months before the release of iPhone 5, the fingerprint scanner was available on the iPhone 5S released barely a month or two ago. Point being, Apple simply likes keeping the media and the people in the dark as to what exactly it likes to do with these companies. And PrimeSense is no different than AlgoTrim, a Mobile Media and Data Compression company Apple bought in August this year, and another company called Cue, another personal assistant app (probably to enhance Siri) Apple bought last month. We have no clue as to what Apple is doing or plans to do with these companies. How is Apple planning to use the gesture based technology and on which of its devices? Your guess is as good as ours.

In fact contrary to what many were expecting (even believed), Apple chose not use the Fingerprint scanner on either iPad Air or iPad Mini Retina. It remains to be seen as to how the use of these technologies in Apple’s iDevices will affect its cost.

Do you think Apple could deploy PrimeSense’ Motion Sensor in the existing line of products or new range of products like the iWatch or even better, Apple TV. Implementing it in Apple TV would make more sense though. Pour in your thoughts and ideas about how do think Apple will use PrimeSense and other technologies and which.

Photo Credit – Cha già José/Flickr