Microsoft Acquires SwiftKey In A Rumored $250 Million Deal

SwiftKey has always been one of the most popular free keyboard apps of all times and it has already been confirmed acquired by Microsoft. Starting today, SwiftKey becomes another company owned by Microsoft.

SwiftKey is probably the most popular keyboard app on Android even set as default by some OEMS. Image: Don Raph / Don Raph Blog

Announcing the acquisition on it’s official website in a blog post, SwiftKey said:

We’re excited to announce an important milestone on SwiftKey’s journey. As of today, we have agreed to join the Microsoft family.

Although there’s is no public information about how much the acquisition cost Microsoft, there are reports that the deal was sealed with a $250 million payment. SwiftKey has always been a free app and that isn’t changing as the company reassured it’s users:

Our number one focus has always been to build the best possible products for our users. This will not change. Our apps will continue to be available on Android and iOS, for free. We are as committed as ever to improving them in new and innovative ways.

SwiftKey has been on Android platform since 2010 and till date, it remains the most popular keyboard app. It came to iOS in 2014 when Apple started allowing third party keyboard applications.

Microsoft has a keyboard app of its own called Word Flow which became available for iOS some weeks ago and this raises the question why Microsoft is buying up a similar app. There are speculations Microsoft is more interested in the technology behind SwiftKey’s word prediction that uses neural networks as opposed to standard word prediction algorithms.

It has also been said that this might be a part of Microsoft’s bigger plan of making its service available on as many devices as possible on different platforms. Lately, Microsoft has been releasing series of applications on both Play Store and App Store; there are even times when some of these apps don’t make it to Microsoft’s own Windows Store.