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Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Apple Acquires Array Camera Developer LinX

WSJ, Techccrunch: Apple has acquired Israeli array camera-technology company LinX Computational Imaging Ltd. Apple confirmed the acquisition with its standard statement when it has bought a company: “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”

The companies had been discussing an acquisition price of about $20 million, according to people familiar with the matter. LinX was founded in 2011. Co-founders and principal shareholders Ziv Attar and Andrey Tovchigrechko are industry veterans. Before starting LinX, Mr. Attar served as a senior optics specialist at Israeli defense company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. Mr. Tovchigrechko led a team of algorithm developers at Samsung Israel.

Most of LinX web site has changed today and now shows very little info out of the rich content covered in the earlier posts here and here.

Few slides from the company presentation deck, now missing from its web site (sorry for too many pictures today):


Update: Globes reports "LinX had previously been in advanced talks to sell the company to both LG and Samsung and had even launched a successful pilot project with the latter but no agreement was ever reached on embedding the cameras into Samsung's smartphones."

Macrumors has uploaded the complete LinX June 2014 presentation on Sribd.
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9 comments:

  1. AnonymousApril 15, 2015 at 2:52 AM

    I saw a comment from Business Insider. Could any one comment?
    "Sos Age 3 hours ago 1 0
    Its not Israeli Technology --the technology is a thieving from no other ones but Italians , that developed it with the help of Tailand group"
    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-just-bought-israeli-camera-190149096.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousApril 15, 2015 at 9:41 AM

    Well, it is a pure Israel LinX development. The Italian statement sounds to me as defamation, but what's new there..

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousApril 15, 2015 at 9:42 AM

    Great job of Ziv Attar and his team and a smart move of Apple!

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousApril 15, 2015 at 10:50 AM

    The camera module is supplied by sunny optical

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousApril 15, 2015 at 12:48 PM

    I wonder what that means for other camera-array suppliers: Pelican, Corephotonics, etc?

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousApril 15, 2015 at 11:08 PM

    When this company has been created please?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Vladimir KoifmanApril 15, 2015 at 11:18 PM

      Initially, they said the company has been established in 2009. More recent presentations stated June 2011. The early materials said that the HQ is in Israel. Then, the HQ has been moved to Holland with a design branch in Lithuania, if my memory serves me. Then, the most recent docs said again that they are Israeli company. May be, the different foundation dates relate to different companies (Israeli, Dutch or Lithuanian).

      Delete
  7. AnonymousApril 17, 2015 at 11:54 AM

    The Dutch link is there due to the co-operation with Anteryon WaferOptics. The HQ of LinX has always been in Israel. For the exact details it will be better to contact the founder of LinX...

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousApril 19, 2015 at 9:57 AM

    Interesting development. Given the comment from http://image-sensors-world.blogspot.ch/2014/10/rumor-apple-is-establishing-cis-design.html?showComment=1413469203718#c2528517312640104471, how nervous would this make the industry? Big buck investors would like to have their money back in a short time and multiplied by at least factor two. With Apple's active approaches at poaching 3D vision experts and Samsung seeming rather settled with ToF, my loud thinking would raise the next question if the Heptagon steering board will want to keep this ToF technology alive in the long run or if it was just an purchase out of despair.

    ReplyDelete

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