Microsoft buys chip company Canesta

29.10.2010
Microsoft is acquiring Canesta, a company that has developed chips that allow natural user interactions with machines, furthering Microsoft's goal of creating more natural user interfaces.

Based in Sunnyvale, California, Canesta makes chips and software that let electronic devices respond to user movements. The concept sounds similar to that which Microsoft incorporated into Kinect, the Xbox add-on that will let users control games with their bodies.

. It expects the acquisition to close before the end of the year.

As part of the deal, Microsoft will get Canesta's products, technology, intellectual property, customer contracts and other resources, Canesta said.

Canesta has 44 patents and more pending, it said. The first application of its technology is a projection keyboard that can be used with mobile devices. Canesta licensed the technology to a company called Celluon, which plans to sell products embedded with the technology to device manufacturers.

According to the company's website, Hitachi and Honda are among Canesta's customers.