“Swedish 3D mapping company C3 Technologies appears to have been acquired in July. Saab AB announced last month that it had completely divested itself of its 57.8% stake in the company for approximately $150 million US dollars,” Arnold Kim reports for MacRumors.. “Meanwhile, C3’s website has since been completely shut down though portions of it remain in Google’s cache.”
Kim reports, “Nyteknik.se reports only that the buyer is a western company. ‘We have promised not to say who the buyer is. But there are no Chinese or other Asian companies. It is a company in the Western world, says one of Saab today after the deal is worth 1 billion.'”
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Kim reports, “That opens the door to one of many companies, but certainly the big players such as Apple, Microsoft and Google are the prime candidates.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Lynn Weiler” and “Jax44” for the heads up.]
I wonder if MS or Google would insist on not to be named…
Good point. With MS announcing every high profile “stinker” acquisition, I doubt it was them. With Apple as secretive as it is, it makes sense that it completed the acquisition in July after the June quarter so the acquisition wouldn’t show up in the financials.
C3′s website has since been completely shut down though portions of it remain in Google’s cache.
So I’d say it’s unlikely to be Google – I’d think they’d stomp it out their cache.
The most likely acquirer is Apple. Apple never announced anything at its initial stage. Microsoft and Google are always going for eyeballs and would routinely milk it for publicity.
Apple doesn’t even announce acquisitions AFTER they’re done. They just shut down the acquired company’s website and assimilate it.
This has Apple’s fingerprints all over it.
Sum of the deal is confusing: they say $150 million for 58% of shares, hence the total is about $250 million, not $1 billion.
Agreed, the price should be closer to $250M rather than $1B. At $250M, given that their app is demo’d on an iPad, and all the other bits about the acquisition give a strong hint that it’s Apple.
Nokia.
Why would it be Nokia?
Aren’t they running Windows Mobile?
Nokia’s Ovi Maps 3D is powered by C3 Technologies.
This makes sense but the “asked not to be identified” part just *screams* Apple. It is more likely that you are right, but I hope you are wrong =P Would be nice to see Apple starting to spend that mighty war chest in something great.
Agreed. I hope I’m wrong, too.
Not saying it is a definitive answer to the question of who’s who, but whose tablet was in that commercial?
I’d almost swear that tablet was made by Samsung….
/snicker
A western company can also be a company in Europe, yes in western Europe.
Totally an Apple-like acquisition and and very cool. Looks very exciting when implemented.
I doubt Apple has an interest in this tech. I’m not implying that it’s not nice, but it doesn’t look like anything unique or groundbreaking like Siri was (i.e. something Apple couldn’t do themselves, for a lot less money).
ITS APPLE – and it makes google maps look old.
When we say high precision, we mean it hundred percent because C3 maps incorporate recently declassified missile targeting technology by Saab, a well-known Swedish aerospace company. As a result of all this, you get military-grade, pixel-perfect realistic representation of the terrain that can be rotated and paned around to a stunning effect. And at CES, they showed off 3D view of San Francisco running surprisingly smoothly on an iPad, seen below
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2011/1/17/from-sweden-next-gen2c-nsa-like-3d-maps-thatll-knock-your-socks-off.aspx
PLS note these demos ran on the ORIGINAL iPAD. They are better on the iPAD 2 and hence even better on iPAD 3.
No 250 million mapping company is any threat to google maps or earth. I hope Apple is not thinking of entering the map game. No money there for them, let google take the shotgun approach. Apple should stay with what