Apple has purchased the mobile search and personal assistant tech firm Siri, reports PC Magazine. The buyout was confirmed by Norman Winarsky, the head of SRI’s venture and licensing program.
Siri launched earlier this year and was recently named the most innovative company at Microsoft’s BizSpark conference. The company currently designs applications for the iPhone 3GS and iPod touch platforms. Whether or not the company will continue to develop for non-Apple platforms is unknown.
Siri’s claim to fame is a natural-language iPhone app that allows users to type or speak into the phone, which then completes the request.
The acquisition could have major implications for the search engine optimization (SEO) industry. Unlike Microsoft or Google, Apple currently lacks a proprietary search engine. With Siri under Apple’s control, though, Apple may begin to develop a search engine of its own.
Last month, Apple detailed the latest update for it’s iPhone operating system. According to SearchEngineLand.com, the iPhone’s mobile search no longer defaults to Google, which could further indicate that Apple is working on developing its own mobile search engine.
