From DailyTech: Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) has reportedly taken a bold step in building its in-house Surface hardware team, buying the Surface 3 Pro's stylus maker, N-Trig, for approximately $200M USD.
The input startup was founded in 1999 and is based in Kfar Saba, Israel. To date the company had held 10 venture capital rounds and raised $160M USD in seed money from investors, according to CrunchBase. Microsoft was among these early VC backers, owning 6.1 percent of the company already, according to CrunchBase.
In recent years N-Trig has struggled to meet its investor expectations in terms of sales produced revenue in the tens of millions of dollars. According to Reuters, the company made $26.6M USD in revenue in 2012 and $36.7M USD in 2013 (up 38 percent on a year-on-year (YoY) basis).
On the flip side, its hardware has reached millions of users worldwide in recent years. Its styluses and the screen technology that support them have been incorporated into hardware and devices from Acer Inc. (TPE:2353), Dell Inc. (private), Fujitsu Ltd. (TYO:6702), Intel Corp. (INTC), Hewlett-Packard Comp. (HPQ), HTC Corp. (TPE:2498), the Lenovo Group Ltd. (HKG:0992), Microsoft, Sony Corp. (TYO:6758), and Toshiba Corp. (TYO:6502). The stylus technology has appeared in numerous smartphone, tablet, and ultrabook models.
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