Avery Hartmans/Business Insider
- Apple just acquired the beloved weather app Dark Sky, a move that could help it boost its ever-growing services division.
- Apple's services category has become an increasingly important revenue driver for the company after several consecutive quarters of sluggish iPhone sales.
- The acquisition makes sense considering Apple has been launching new digital products and improving its own iPhone apps in recent years.
- It could also add more fuel to the argument that Apple makes it difficult for smaller app makers to compete against Apple's own services.
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Apple just acquired the popular weather app Dark Sky, a move that gives the iPhone maker another avenue to expand its ever-growing services division. That category has become increasingly important for the Apple as it seeks to become less reliant on smartphone sales.
Dark Sky announced the acquisition in a blog post on Monday, although the terms of the deal have not been disclosed. The iOS app will remain unchanged, but those using Dark Sky on Android or Google's Wear OS smartwatch platform will only have access to the app until July 1. The company will also continue to support its application programming interface - a set of tools and protocols that allows other developers to integrate Dark Sky data into their own weather apps - for existing customers through the end of 2021.
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Roughly a year ago, for example, it held an entire special event dedicated to new digital offerings like Apple TV Plus, Apple Arcade, and Apple News Plus, a rare move for a company that usually only holds press conferences to announce new hardware.