Making something different from everyone, which cannot be copied, is the goal of any business that wants healthy profit margins. Buying off the shelf stuff (if they had not bought Authentec and left anyone else use it), means your product is exactly the same as every one else. That's why they bought it, insuring separation.
Cisco has bought hundreds of companies, Intel has also bought dozens of companies, same thing with Microsoft, Google, etc. Buying companies with new technologies is routinely done by everyone. Small companies selling to big ones has been the norm in every industry for 200 years.
Why? Because of the risk/return of startups. Out of 100 startups, maybe 10 will be successful enough to be sold. Big companies don'T want to take this huge risk of having 90 failures. Their business is not investment banking.
They let the market itself triage the good tech, and then when they're still not mainstream (or just becoming mainstream), they buy them out.
Why? Capitalism. People in those small companies want the money. They are not interested in remaining pure and making 100K a year, or wait 5 more years to possibly sell for more. The tech field is fickle, especially in narrow areas like biometrics. Who knows what could exist in 5 years. So, you take your money while you can.
The added money by being bought also helps develop the technology further and bring it to the mainstream (this is what has happened with Apple).
Do people think Authentec is running a charity? They don't owe anything to anybody. If Samsung had bought this company and put it in their Galaxy phones, pretty sure no Android fan here would be offended by that; no sir.
