Apple acquires companies. And, more often than not, those companies are picked up quietly, with little fanfare at all. That may have been the case with the latest company rumored to have been purchased by Apple.
According to a report published by MacRumors, Apple has acquired the real-time motion capture company Faceshift recently. As suggested by a tweet sent out not too long ago, the publication has tried to piece together whether or not the Cupertino-based company has indeed acquired Faceshift or not, but as is usually the case with these types of buys from Apple, there’s not a lot of public information to gather.
Still, MacRumors was able to put together a compelling case that Apple could have indeed acquired Faceshift.
What’s seemingly been confirmed by the Swiss company registry filing is that Faceshift has indeed been purchased. As it stands right now, the trio of original corporate directors have since stepped down as of August 14, and been replaced by acquisitions attorney Martin Frey, as well as Baker & McKenzie mergers. As the original report notes, there are no direct ties to Apple and Frey. However, Apple has used the services of Baker & McKenzie in the past when dealing with international companies.
While the publication tried to get in touch with individuals who might know what has happened to Faceshift –which has gone completely dark on its social media networks, and on its own page, save for service requests– there was no real information to latch onto. It was learned that Apple has shown interest in face-tracking technology in the past, though, so this type of purchase would make sense.
Interestingly enough, Faceshift was working on several different consumer-facing new projects, one of which included a plug-in for Microsoft’s Skype to utilize real-time avatars while conducting a video call. Based on the production video, which is available to watch below, it would certainly be interesting to see this technology available to consumers in such a way. A future with FaceTime could be an easy consideration for Apple, if not a bit cheesy. (This would seem almost perfect for Google’s Hangouts, which already have a ton of animation/alteration features for video calls.)
The publication also shows that at least two different employees of Faceshift have since updated their LinkedIn profiles, saying, they are both looking “for new opportunities.”
It is certainly worth noting that this would not be the first time that Apple has acquired a company focused on a company in the area of facial recognition. In 2010, the company acquired Polar Rose. And, more recently, Apple acquired PrimeSense, which focuses on real-time 3D motion capture, for upwards of $350 million. So Apple does have some history with this type of buy, but unfortunately there are no official confirmations just yet.
As for Faceshift itself, the company was founded in 2011 out of the Computer Graphics and Geometry Laboratory from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. They’ve been around quite some time and have put together exceptional motion-capture results, which you can see in a demo reel below.
[via MacRumors]
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