If a once thriving app suddenly starts releasing updates, you can safely assume that something is up. And when half your team but not the product itself is acquired by another company, then expect a major shakeup soon. Well it’s been more than a year and now we know the future of once popular virtual keyboard Fleksy. Barcelona-based keyboard startup ThingThing has announced that they are taking over the development of the app, creating “the only independent private keyboard in the world.”
The acquisition is also one step towards their goal of creating the Keyboard as a Platform (KaaP). What this means exactly is still unclear at this point. But they did state what their initial plans are for the next few months. They will be announcing a new brand soon for the Android keyboard (and the iOS too). They will also be continuing a focus on data privacy and may revisit the cloud storage feature that Fleksy previously introduced and then discontinued.
The bugs that have been plaguing the keyboard app for the past few months will supposedly be fixed by the update they’re releasing as part of the announcement. They also promised to add more supported languages in the future and to add new services as well since some parts of the keyboard (but not the whole thing) are still open-sourced. The auto-correction feature, which has been one of the selling points of Fleksy previously, will also be enhanced.
Things are still a bit unclear whether ThingThing can still salvage Fleksy and if third-party keyboards are still relevant when OEMs have been hyping up their own built-ins and Google Keyboard has also been making a play for the market. But at least we can now see some movement from Fleksy, if you still have it installed in your device.
