Apple has acquired Particle, an HTML app company, which has received funding from superstar Justin Timberlake in the past.
According to a report from CNET’s Josh Lowensohn, the acquisition happened last month, but nobody knew about it. The price is still unknown. Particle developer Lynn Collette (who is currently listed as a UI engineer at Apple on LinkedIn) confirmed the news on Twitter (via TechCrunch):
Particle has done HTML5 work for Apple in the past, as well as for Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Motorola and Sony. For Apple’s sake, it’s probably good they scooped it up before Google did considering these relationships.
Particle had said in its about page: “HTML5 and the WebKit rendering engine already drive the web experience on devices like the iPhone, iPad, and Android, but are increasingly becoming the lowest common denomination on the desktop web in next generation browsers like Google’s Chrome, and Apple’s Safari. Particle has chosen to focus on this technology so intensely because we believe it will soon be the rendering engine that powers a new universe of light weight and embedded applications from set top boxes to game consoles to Chrome OS and Android devices to portable telephony and media devices of all kinds.”
That page appears to have been taken down.