Microsoft acquired the hugely popular third party keyboard SwiftKey this past week. They reportedly paid somewhere around 250 million for them. SwiftKey is a very popular keyboard on Android, and they’ve even helped out Stephen Hawking. Making it easier for him to type full words instead of just characters, using nothing but a muscle in his cheek.
My first reaction was, noooooo not my favorite keyboard. Then I thought about how Microsoft has been doing on Android lately. They’ve been releasing some great apps and this isn’t the first app they’ve bought up. They also bought the very popular Sunrise Calendar app.
Which could be the problem. While that app is still available on the Play Store. They have basically killed the app, and all future development is done on their Outlook Calendar. That’s not good news for fans of Sunrise Calendar, however it’s not terrible either. As you can still download and use the old version. SwiftKey says that their keyboard will stay free and available on both iOS and Android.
Whether or not Microsoft will kill off SwiftKey in the future like they did with Sunrise Calendar is anyone’s guess. I’m hoping that they don’t and just wanted SwiftKey’s technology for Windows. One thing is certain though, there will always be new apps to take SwiftKey’s place if Microsoft does kill it off. Let’s just hope that day never comes. As I’ve been a loyal fan of Swiftkey for years now.
Source: Android Police & SwiftKey
