Microsoft Acquires SwiftKey

No productivity app seems to be safe with Microsoft. Following a Financial Times report from yesterday, the company has confirmed they have acquired SwiftKey, makers of the popular keyboard and predictive text engine for iOS and Android:

This acquisition is a great example of Microsoft’s commitment to bringing its software and services to all platforms. We’ll continue to develop SwiftKey’s market-leading keyboard apps for Android and iOS as well as explore scenarios for the integration of the core technology across the breadth of our product and services portfolio. Moreover, SwiftKey’s predictive technology aligns with Microsoft’s investments and ambition to develop intelligent systems that can work more on the user’s behalf and under their control.

In the coming months, we’ll have more to share about how we’ll integrate SwiftKey technology with our Guinness World Record Word Flow technology for Windows. In the interim, I’m extremely excited about the technology, talent and market position SwiftKey brings to us with this acquisition, and about how this further demonstrates Microsoft’s desire to bring key apps and technologies to platforms from Windows to Android to iOS.

SwiftKey is one of the most popular third-party keyboards on both mobile OSes; on iOS, it’s often relied upon by users who want a multilingual typing experience in a single keyboard. I’m interested to see how SwiftKey as a keyboard will continue on iOS – custom keyboards haven’t received much attention in the past two years, and they’re severely limited in how much they can integrate with the rest of the system.

Above all, SwiftKey is good tech for Microsoft. The acquisition gives them access to a large database of typing habits and patterns spanning 100 languages, and it’ll likely help them build text features on desktop and mobile. Long term, it’s hard to predict how Microsoft’s string of mobile app acquisitions will play out, but, right now, it’s clear that Microsoft is buying the best apps around.