Unlike rival Apple, one of the biggest complaints levied against Google's Android mobile operating platform is the performance inequality between higher and lower-end devices.
That performance fragmentation may come to an end as the Mountain View-based company has acquired five-year-old French developer FlexyCore, maker of Android performance amplifier application DroidBooster.
Google confirmed the $23.1 million purchase, Monday.
"The FlexyCore team has strong expertise in building software to optimize Android device performance, and we think they'd be great fit with our team," Google said.
The purchase also meant the removal of DroidBooster from Google Play and FlexyCore employees being already integrated into the Android team. FlexyCore's site is currently down though its YouTube account is still active which hasn't seen much added content since 2011.
FlexyCore wasfounded by former researcher for INRIA and head of research and development for Texas Instrumentals Gilbert Cabillic. According to a French publication, the acquisition process began September 2012 and concluded this month. The developer was originally supported by French state-backed incubator Emergys and had raised 1.5 million Euros from Paris-based VC Sochrastem.
DroidBooster claims to make an Android device run "ten times faster" through generating heavily optimized ARM binaries from Android's normal Dalvik code. The app also claims to increase battery life by presumably spending less time processing and more time in a low-power state.
Google's acquisition could be in line with the eventual launch of Android 4.4 KitKat which is slated to perform well on lower-spec devices. This means standard uniformity in core functions on all devices, similar to iOS devices. Rumors suggest that the successor of Jelly Bean could be released sometime by the end of this month.
