FlexyCore, a company that developed technology to make Android faster, is now a part of Google.
French publication L'Express reported today that Google acquired FlexyCore for €16.9 million, the equivalent of $23.1 million. The acquisition process reportedly commenced back in September 2012 and ended at the beginning of this month. Google hasn't commented on the details of the acquisition but acknowledged it in a brief statement to GigaOM's David Meyer:
The FlexyCore team has strong expertise in building software to optimize Android device performance, and we think they'd be a great fit with our team
Established in 2008, FlexyCore's main product was DroidBooster, a technology that the company claimed improved the performance of Android devices by several times. Here's how the technology is described on ARM's Partners website:
DroidBooster's principle relies on improving the performance of an Android handset at build-time by generating highly optimized ARM binary from Dalvik code. DroidBooster can be applied to any ARM based platform, any Smartphone range (high/low/mid) and is compatible with any Android system.
And here’s a video presentation of FlexyCore’s technology:
There's a chance Google acquired FlexyCore mostly for the engineering talent, in a so-called "acquihire". But it's also possible that FlexyCore's DroidBooster technology will be (or has already been) integrated into Android, contributing to smoother performance even on less capable hardware.
The WSJ reported in June that KitKat will lower the barrier to entry in terms of hardware requirements, and even Google's KitKat teaser page seems to suggest something along that line: "it's our goal with Android KitKat to make an amazing Android experience available for everyone".
We should find Google's KitKat plans soon – the tech giant is rumored to launch the latest version of Android by the end of the month.
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