Industry watch Toolkit

Apple snaps up FireWire company

Margaret Kane CNet

Published: 04 Apr 2002 16:12 BST

Apple Computer said Thursday that it has acquired Zayante, a company that specialises in an Apple-developed consumer electronics standard. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Zayante's technology is used to make consumer electronics and semiconductor products compliant with the IEEE 1394 standard -- also known as FireWire. FireWire, which was invented by Apple, is designed to help PCs and consumer electronics devices transfer large amounts of data.

Zayante, which was formerly known as FireFly, was founded by former Apple employees who helped develop FireWire.

Michael Johas Teener, Zayante's chief technology officer, was the chief architect of Apple FireWire technology. He worked at Apple from 1988 to 1996. Another Apple alumnus now at Zayante is senior systems engineer Jay Hamlin, who contributed to FireWire and Apple's Pippin device.

Historically, Apple has not been active on the acquisition front. The company's most notable acquisition was NeXT Software for $400m in 1997. Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, was NeXT's chief executive at the time, and served as an adviser to Apple's former chief executive before taking over the position.

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