After years of collaboration, Microsoft reportedly buying N-trig

Surface Pro 3 and pen

Microsoft makes tablets that use digital pens and N-trig makes those pens. The Israeli company is the brains behind the stylus included with Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3. So perhaps the stories of Microsoft buying N-trig for $200 million are true.

Globes Online in N-trig’s home country reported the deal, which isn’t yet confirmed by either company. It makes sense on several levels though. Microsoft invested in N-trig previously, which has raised $130 million over the course of eight rounds, says Globes and honed its focus solely on digital pens. Financially, N-trig has been challenged of late, canceling a planned IPO and losing $117 million in the first half of 2014.

The Surface Pro 3 wasn’t the first partnership between Microsoft, it’s hardware partners and N-trig though. N-trig’s website lists around three dozen Windows computers that have N-trig technology inside. And that list shows just the more current devices; I remember N-trig being the digitizer and pen company behind various tablet PCs before anyone had an Apple iPad, for example, although it wasn’t always the smoothest experience.

Dell_Latitude_XT2

Pen computing really hasn’t taken off the way Microsoft thought it would; at least not yet. My first Windows TabletPC in 2004 was one of the very few that had a digital pen, mainly because the interface wasn’t up to snuff and the cost to add pen support to laptops back then was more prohibitive. Now, there’s far more value in the digital pen thanks to interface updates and improved software that uses a stylus.

Even if it doesn’t take, the pen revolution is really just beginning in the grand scheme of things. Microsoft investing more in it now seem appropriate, particularly as it builds its own pen-enabled devices. With an N-trig deal, Microsoft can better control the overall hardware and software experience, helping to make the pen a more standard part of computing.

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Tuesday, March 10, 2015
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