Apple Confirms Acquisition of Israeli Flash Memory Firm Anobit [Updated]

[thenerdal]

Originally Posted by cvaldes

Heck, Microsoft itself was purchased from another company.

Mrs. Gates (Billy's mom) basically bought her trust fund baby a computer company that wrote the precursor to PC-DOS. Not only that, from her charity activities (she was from one of Seattle's oldest banking families), she knew someone who sat on IBM's board of directors and got Big Blue to look at Sonny Boy's operating system (which would eventually become the primary OS of the IBM PC).

Well, Junior took the ball and ran with it until the EU and US DOJ started poking around for antitrust practices. Mama Gates told Sonny Boy to loosen the purse strings, not be such a tightwad. By this time, he was wise enough to listen to Mom and she was the initial executive director of the Gates Foundation.

Bill Gates is a very important philanthropist, but let's not hide anything. Microsoft had a chance because his mom made some very strategic moves early in her son's professional endeavors.

That's not true.

----------

Originally Posted by faroZ06

Unlike Google and Microsoft, they don't need to buy very many things out because they are creative. Microsoft, for instance, bought Office from another company. Google bought Motorola Mobility.[COLOR="#808080"]

Actually, Microsoft didn't buy Office.

[lilo777]

Originally Posted by VicMacs

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A405)

No more Sammyflash

You are being naive. Anobit does not make flash and neither does Apple. Merge two companies not making flash memory and you get what? No flash memory. You need FABs for that and only Samsung has those (and spending $5..10 billion dollars annually to update those). Spending $500 million these days just buys you some patents and that's what this purchase is.

[alksion]

Originally Posted by isoMorpheus

Yeah, we just buy small companies from time to time, nothing to see here, small.

I love how it's chump change to them, crazy but pretty cool!

[thelookingglass]

Originally Posted by cvaldes

Uh, no.

The point is that Microsoft was built by acquiring another company. That's totally relevant to the topic, particularly because the commentor I was replying to was talking about Office which didn't exist at the time of Microsoft's founding. Office is a hodgepodge pieced together from code mostly purchased from outside sources (which actually provided the better components, like Excel).

I have no bitterness about Microsoft/Gates success. Why should I? It's not like I was shut out of deal because Mama Gates stepped in and showed me my hat. A s a matter of fact, I was actually quite complimentary of Bill's more recent endeavors. Heck, most of my jobs have come because I knew somebody. I never said that having connections was a BAD thing.

I was just pointing out that Microsoft wasn't built from scratch. Far from that.

I don't work in high tech anymore. Money isn't the only great thing in life. I make far less today than I would have had I stuck in high tech, but that was my deliberate choice.

In any case, I make more the 99.9% of the people on this planet, even if I don't make the median income for a college-educated American of my age.

YOU are the one who needs an attitude adjustment.

He should've known better than to argue with a lawyer (I think you're a lawyer, IIRC).

[blue22]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Hopefully this will be the first significant step towards a lasting peace in the Middle East.

[Kaibelf]

Originally Posted by blue22

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Hopefully this will be the first significant step towards a lasting peace in the Middle East.

Doubtful. I seem to recall stupid posts against "Zionists" in the initial story about this purchase. Some people just can't help but apply stupid religious conflicts to a forum full of people who don't give a damn.

[AlphaDogg]

Originally Posted by blue22

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Hopefully this will be the first significant step towards a lasting peace in the Middle East.

Ever been to Israel? One little company being bought out by Apple will not create peace in the Middle East. I won't say what will, because I don't want to start a political debate.

[Mr. Gates]

I gotta wonder how cheap the labor is in Israel to make this a good option.

Or maybe I'm missing something

[paul4339]

Originally Posted by VicMacs

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A405)

No more Sammyflash

Anobit designs the flash controller.

.

[inkswamp]

Originally Posted by cvaldes

Heck, Microsoft itself was purchased from another company.

Mrs. Gates (Billy's mom) basically bought her trust fund baby a computer company that wrote the precursor to PC-DOS. Not only that, from her charity activities (she was from one of Seattle's oldest banking families), she knew someone who sat on IBM's board of directors and got Big Blue to look at Sonny Boy's operating system (which would eventually become the primary OS of the IBM PC).

Well, Junior took the ball and ran with it until the EU and US DOJ started poking around for antitrust practices. Mama Gates told Sonny Boy to loosen the purse strings, not be such a tightwad. By this time, he was wise enough to listen to Mom and she was the initial executive director of the Gates Foundation.

Bill Gates is a very important philanthropist, but let's not hide anything. Microsoft had a chance because his mom made some very strategic moves early in her son's professional endeavors.

Go here and read #6. Oh hell, read the whole damn thing. Sounds like you need it.

[adder7712]

Originally Posted by paul4339

Anobit designs the flash controller.

.

...and the flash memory unit themselves could be manufactured by Samsung...

[marcusj0015]

Originally Posted by george-brooks

I think this means that apple has a true desire to make all of their products flash based - and only flash based - in the coming years. Hopefully this will mean that we will start to see larger capacities at smaller prices, but I hope that Apple doesn't take a cue from the MB Air and start to install flash memory on the motherboard. Hopefully this isn't another step in Apple's attempt to make a machine that is completely closed for the user.

Dude, Apple SHOULD put Flash on the motherboard, for faster access and more importantly that way a HDD/SDD could be installed.

[arcite]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

Apple buys companies that they see can add value to penetrating new markets and growing mature markets without adding heavy overhead and debt taken on by larger acquisitions.

Sorry, but you want to buy out Kodak? Go right ahead. It's a dump full of debt with very little useful IP.

There is a good 50 large corporations in similar shape. Have at them.

LOL why are people modding you down?

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by jhead95

You would think with the amount of cash they have, they would purchase more than just 'a few' small business'.

Why would they? Any acquisition has a huge cost beyond the money paid; the company has to be integrated, you have to make sure everything keeps running smoothly because you don't want the important people in the company jump ship, and so on. Apple is very careful only to buy companies that can directly contribute to improving Apple's business. And there are not many of them.

Originally Posted by Mr. Gates

I gotta wonder how cheap the labor is in Israel to make this a good option.

Or maybe I'm missing something

You are missing something. What counts isn't how cheap the labour is in Israel, but how good their universities are.

[currentinterest]

I believe this company has technology for greatly improving the reliability and efficiency of flash memory allowing one to get better performance from less expensive memory. This keeps costs down without sacrificing performance. The acquisition will pay for itself many times over; it is not just about patents.

[blue22]

Originally Posted by Kaibelf

Doubtful. I seem to recall stupid posts against "Zionists" in the initial story about this purchase. Some people just can't help but apply stupid religious conflicts to a forum full of people who don't give a damn.

Originally Posted by AlphaDogg

Ever been to Israel? One little company being bought out by Apple will not create peace in the Middle East. I won't say what will, because I don't want to start a political debate.

Relax, it was just a joke.

[Mr. Retrofire]

Originally Posted by jhead95

You would think with the amount of cash they have, they would purchase more than just 'a few' small business'.

Originally Posted by MacRumors

Apple reportedly paid $400-500 million for Anobit...

...Anobit is currently responsible for a key flash memory controller for the iPad and iPhone

Small business. Really.

;-)

[Kilamite]

This Israeli cool news.

[MrNomNoms]

Originally Posted by gatearray

Are there any Anobit patents on this technology to be had in this acquisition? If so, it could give Apple a real price advantage for flash storage in the coming years. See this great article's explanation...

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2011/1...am-technology/

It would be nice for the person who wrote the article what RAM actually means instead of throwing it around like some sort of buzz word to give the unsuspecting audience the impression he actually knows what he is talking about. Btw, SMB 2.1 is in Windows 7/Windows 20008 R2 and SMB 2.2 is already in the Windows 8 developer preview so I hope Apple is on the ball when it comes to delivering updates.

[Thunderhawks]

Originally Posted by george-brooks

It is, but not with anything widely commercially available. OWC sells a few expensive replacements for the previous model. It is starting to feel like Apple is limiting our choices even more.

Why would Apple want everybody to tinker around inside their products other than memory chips?"

They sell several configurations regarding SSD size etc. and if they don't offer what YOU want, you either have to find a different solution around their limitations or another product from another company.

It's the way they want to sell their products, so why complain?

I bet 90% of Apple consumers buy their machines and never do anything to them other than software updates which pop up automatically.

[AppleMacDudeG4]

This is a good move on the part of Apple. By having a company making the flash memories for them, they will not have to worry running into supply issues or having to spend time negotiating on prices.

[Mr. Retrofire]

Originally Posted by Peace

Pretty soon Apple is going to make all their components themselves.

Not really. But innovative flash memory products reach the customer base faster, if one company controls the entire process (design, manufacturing, ...). A good example are SandForce-controllers. Only a few SSD companies use them, which makes them expensive.

[Thunderhawks]

Originally Posted by Mr. Gates

I gotta wonder how cheap the labor is in Israel to make this a good option.

Or maybe I'm missing something

The percentage of labor in that manufacturing process is insignificant.

It's the brain power Apple was after. They don't pay 400-500 million to get forklift drivers.

[philstubbington]

A few websites are suggesting that this is Apple's largest acquisition.

Didn't seem quite right to me (NeXT must have been bigger, surely?) so I checked on http://www.measuringworth.com and it seems like the relative value of the reported $400m paid for NeXT in 1997 ranges from $525m to $697m, against the reported $400m paid for Anobit. So, at the bottom end at least, it's not the biggest.

Just thought someone else might like to know

[TMay]

Originally Posted by cvaldes

They won't make them, however they may end up designing a lot of custom components. Anobit -- like P.A. Semi and Intrinsity -- is a fabless design firm. The actual manufacturing (fabrication) is handled by someone else.

I'm a tad surprised that Apple hasn't made a move to acquiring Imagination Technologies (who provides the graphics design for their handheld chips), but perhaps there's more competition in that space and such an investment would be a far riskier gamble.

9.5% ownership by Apple.