Yahoo has announced its acquisition of Aviate, a startup that automatically organizes the apps on your home screen. Yahoo's CEO Marissa Mayer announced the acquisition during her keynote address at International CES on Tuesday.
"It is no secret we are amidst a massive and continuing shift to mobile," Mayer said on stage. "But the shift is not just about proliferation, it is also about how much time we are spending on phones. Weather, mail, finance, news - mobile puts them in your pocket and makes them a daily habit. We acquired Aviate because we believe home screens should be smarter and more personalized."
According to VentureBeat, Mayer opened up her discussion with some impressive numbers regarding the growth of mobile devices in the modern age. She said the total number of smartphones is up about 27 percent year-over-yeah and tablet usage is up 78 percent year-over-year. She believes that by 2017, people can expect to see 3.8 billion devices connected to the Internet, which is nearly two billion more than today.
With smartphones solidifying themselves in people's lives and how we consumer and collect information, Mayer says she hopes the acquisition of Aviate will help Yahoo capitalize on this trend.
"Mobile has made our daily lives more consistent, convenient, and inspiring in ways didn't think possible 10 years ago," Mayer said. "Think about how much your phone understands about you - your contacts, calendar, emails and images - and what happens when that context becomes part of thee search experience. The future of search is contextual knowledge, and we are investing in the future."
Aviate is a small San Francisco-based startup company that is used to help organize and rearrange your home screen, depending on the time of day, to give you the information you need when you need it. For example, the app will know to prioritize weather and calendar apps in the morning. The app launched back in October for Android. This marks Yahoo's first acquisition of 2014.
