Apple continues its strategy of making small, strategic acquisitions, this time picking up a voice recognition and automatic personal assistant for the iPhone developed by the company Siri. As neat as the Siri technology is, the history behind it is even more fascinating, and leaves you wondering what the wizards at Apple will do with it. Enterprise Mobile Today gets the details on the mystery company Apple just purchased.
Apple today racked up its second acquisition for the month, a San Jose startup called Siri, which provides a voice-activated and controlled virtual personal assistant for the iPhone that performs a variety of functions both within the phone and by doing Web searches.
The news was discovered by blogger Robert Scoble, who noticed a Federal Trade Commission page listing acquisitions that received early termination under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act (that page is here in PDF format). Early termination under HSR means the pending purchase has been given the green light by the FTC and Department of Justice, and there is no need to wait until the government’s deadline to make a ruling.