Apple finally seals deal to buy PrimeSense for as much as $350 million (Update: confirmed)

There’s been plenty of speculation over the past week that Apple is poised to acquire Israeli company PrimeSense, which worked with Microsoft to produce the Kinect — and now reports in Israel claim a deal was completed on Friday and will be announced this coming week.

Update: Apple confirmed the deal, but has not disclosed the price — see the bottom of this post for more.

Globes, a business publication with a track record of learning about deals before they are completed — such as Google’s acquisition of Waze — reports that the acquisition has cost Apple $300-350 million but “has not been formally announced” yet.

Apple was first linked with PrimeSense back in July, but this time around there is plenty of smoke behind the fire. After reports broke early this week, All Things D cited sources at Apple who confirmed that the two companies were in discussions but stressed that no deal had been completed — now, one week later, it could well be that Globes has got an early heads-up on the deal, which would representation another major exit from an Israeli tech company.

PrimeSense is best known as the firm behind the original version of Microsoft’s Kinect, but the company sells its own 3D sensors and middleware for use in markets as diverse as TV, mobile, computers, retail, robotics, industry and healthcare. Apple could find use for the technology in at least four of those fields, although last week’s reports suggested Apple’s interest lies in bringing gesture-based navigate to the Smart TV it is rumored to be developing.

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We’ve reached out to both companies for comment and will update this post with any information that we’re given.

Update: Apple confirmed the deal by providing AllThingsD with a canned statement it uses after acquiring companies: “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”

PrimeSense has also confirmed the deal with a brief statement:

We can confirm the deal with Apple. Further than that, we cannot comment at this stage.

Headline image via Neil Bird / Flickr