Apple Reportedly Acquired Pullstring To Develop Its Virtual Assistant, Siri

Axios reported that the Cupertino-based company, Apple, has acquired a company named Pullstring which concentrated on designing, developing and publishing voice apps for its customers on some platforms such as the Google Assistant or Alexa of Amazon.

The Apple’s latest move is said to improve its virtual assistant, Siri, which seems to face some certain limits in its features, as well as the number of products it can interact with, especially in comparison with Alexa, the digital butler of Amazon. In reality, both Google and Amazon are providing tens of thousands of utilities, skills, and applications for the virtual assistant platforms available in the current market. That means Apple’s Siri has a lot to do if the company wants to beat these heavy rivals.

At present, Amazon is known as the head in the digital assistant market when it comes to the use of smart speakers. On October 2018, according to a report from the Strategy Analytics, the retail company has occupied 63 percent of the US’s smart speaker market, while Google has held only 17 percent, and Tim Cook’s company, Apple, occupies only 4 percent.

Pullstring stepped into the market 8 years ago, in 2011 and it was set the latest price on $163.57 million. Being supposedly full of ambition, this startup was founded and run by Oren Jacob, former Pixar executive. Although it has just been active for a while, it has become one of the prominent brands in artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

Up to now, both Apple and Pullstring haven’t revealed any term of the acquisition yet. However, the deal is estimated not to exceed $100 million. The startup doesn’t only help developers who love developing voice apps to publish their own products, but it also collaborates with Mattel, a toy manufacturing company to design Hello Barbie, a Barbie doll that can talk like the real thing.