Touchy Subject: Motorola Invests In Sensitive Object

• Rob Jackson
• 15 years ago

Motorola just issued a press release announcing their investment in a company called Sensitive Object who focus on multi-touch platforms with a bit of a twist:

The company was created in October 2003 with an innovative and patent-protected technology capable of “tactilizing” any surface. This unique software technology leverages acoustics to analyze sound waves departing from the point of a touch to precisely and cost-effectively transform any product into a touch device.  Sensitive Object’s ReverSys^® software can be deployed in any product benefiting from “touch-based” user interfaces including touch screen and touch control in various markets such as mobile devices.

A few of the key words in the paragraph:

• patent-protected
• any product
• mobile devices

I haven’t seen anything from Sensitive Object in action but the concept sounds pretty amazing. If Motorola can leverage this in the development of their own Android Phones they are going to have an incredibly powerful combination. Right now the Motorola Droid doesn’t have multi-touch support for default Google Apps and Apple has been suing the heck out of anyone trying to use pinch and zoom stuff and other multi-touch-goodies in the United States.

With Sensitive Object, Motorola may be onto a competitive advantage that they could keep from Apple. Whether or not we’ll see the fruits of this investment ripen is another question altogether, but it seems like good timing to make an acquisition like this.