Apple has purchased the motion sensor company PrimeSense, an Israeli firm that which gained prominence from its early work on Microsoft’s Kinect.
Reports put the purchase price at $300 million to $350 million, although Kristin Huguet, a spokeswoman for Apple, declined to confirm the amount.
“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,†Ms. Huguet said in an email.
PrimeSense’s innovations in sensing and machine vision contributed to the early development of Kinect, Microsoft’s motion-sensing camera. PrimeSense has developed technology for digital devices to observe surroundings in three dimensions, allowing for the identification of people and objects.
Apple has changed the way people interact with technology, leading the transition from keyboard to touch screens with its iPhone and other products. The company has received several patents related to gesture technology over the last few years, feeding speculation that the next big transition could be from touch to gesture.
PrimeSense is not the first big Israeli purchase for Apple, which is based in Cupertino, Calif. Last year, the company purchased Anobit Technologies, an Israeli maker of flash storage products.
Other Silicon Valley companies have snapped up Israeli enterprises as well. In June, Google bought Waze, a social mapping start-up, for $1 billion. More than 70 Israeli companies are listed on the Nasdaq, and more than a third are in the technology sector.
