Apple mobile phones, computers and other products are synonymous with high-end. Many people think that Apple is a technological innovation company. For example, the first-generation iPhone created a new era of touch-screen mobile phones, such as its own chips and its own operating system. , only Siri, etc., but I have to say that none of Apple’s technologies are original and were acquired through acquisitions. Many people definitely don’t believe it.
I think Apple’s innovation is more about design and business model innovation. Many technologies that we now think are very powerful are not original to Apple. Of course, by acquiring technology and integrating technology, we design trends that lead the development. The product itself is also an innovation.
NeXT INC.: Return of operating system technology and founder
People familiar with the history of Apple will know that Steve Jobs was once forced to leave Apple. After he left, he Started to form NeXT with several colleagues from Apple.
NeXT Company launched the first NeXT computer in 1988, but from a production perspective, NeXT product sales were very limited. The company sold only about 50,000 computers. In 1997, Apple acquired NeXT for $400 million. This acquisition also meant that Steve Jobs returned to Apple, which he founded in 1976.
NeXT's technology is what we now know as Apple's OS X and iOS systems.
FingerWorks: Multi-touch and gesture control
Back to about ten years ago, the first generation iPhone had not yet been released, but in 2005 In April 2017, Apple acquired a company called "FingerWorks" for an unknown price. This American company originally specialized in gesture operation/gesture recognition. It was not well received by people at the time, and no one guessed that Apple would buy it to do this. What.
A few years later, with the official launch of the first-generation iPhone equipped with multi-touch function, everyone suddenly remembered the deal back then, and now multi-touch has become an essential feature of a smartphone.
P.A. Semiamp; Intrinsity: Independent chip design
In 2008, Apple acquired P.A. Semi for US$278 million, a company specializing in ultra-low-power processor design. The low-power Apple A9 processing is absolutely inseparable from it. There is also a small chip company called Intrinsity located in Texas, USA, which was acquired by Apple. It developed mobile chips for Apple and Samsung at the same time. Its products are famous for their low power consumption and high performance.
This is one of Apple’s most successful acquisitions in mobile phones. When other manufacturers were suffering from hardware homogeneity and Qualcomm’s patent bundling, Apple’s self-developed A series processors completed “ "Domination", the slogan that asked friends to "get a score if you don't accept it" became a slap in the face.
Siri Inc.: Hello, Siri!
Siri is undoubtedly Apple’s most important voice product. The purchase of Siri Inc. for US$200 million in 2010 was undoubtedly a very cost-effective deal. After that, Apple made acquisitions in the direction of speech recognition and NLP. All based on Siri. But Comrade Lao Qiao was not satisfied with this at the time, so on the one hand, Apple developed its own research and development to improve the performance of Siri. On the other hand, in April 2014, Apple acquired Novauris, an automated speech recognition technology company. Their core products are based on The server's scalable speech recognition system, NovaSystem, is characterized by its ability to handle multiple voice access requests at the same time; in October 2015, Apple acquired VocalIQ to solve the problem that Siri can only recognize the most basic commands and cannot make a higher-matching answer. problem.