While not yet confirmed by Apple, it appears their widely rumored acquisition of Anobit has been completed. Anobit is based in Israel and provides several storage components like mobile flash controllers, along with their own line of enterprise SSDs. Confirmation of the transaction comes via Twitter post from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "Welcome to Israel, Apple Inc. on your 1st acquisition here. I’m certain that you’ll benefit from the fruit of the Israeli knowledge."
While not yet confirmed by Apple, it appears their widely rumored acquisition of Anobit has been completed. Anobit is based in Israel and provides several storage components like mobile flash controllers, along with their own line of enterprise SSDs. Confirmation of the transaction comes via Twitter post from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "Welcome to Israel, Apple Inc. on your 1st acquisition here. I’m certain that you’ll benefit from the fruit of the Israeli knowledge."
Those outside the enterprise storage space may not have much background on Anobit. Anobit was founded in 2006 in Herzeliya Pituach, Israel with subsidiaries in the US and Korea. They’re a venture backed company with $76 million invested to date from Battery Ventures, Pitango Venture Capital, and strategic investors like the venture arms of Intel and Micron. Apple has used Anobit controllers and components in many popular devices like the iPad, iPhone and MacBook Air, all of which leverage solid state storage. Anobit’s secret sauce is what they call MSP (Memory Signal Processing). MSP is essentially Anobit’s collection of wear leveling, performance and endurance technologies, something all SSD controllers have under a variety of branded names.
While the move to some may be a bit strange, Apple to this point has preferred to buy or license storage components, there’s clearly a land grab going on in the SSD controller space. Owning your own controller offers numerous market advantages including reduced materials cost, improved support and core differentiation from competitors. OCZ Technology bought Indilinx earlier this year and LSI recently announced what looks like the deal of the year with their acquisition of SandForce.
Apple clearly sees the writing on the wall – the future of storage is solid state, and to be in the best position to compete, companies must own their own processor technology.
