Apple has acquired app discovery company Chomp. The company has been in existence since 2009 and provides users with a search engine that discovers apps based on themes and uses rather than only the name.

The service has especially become useful now with over 500,000 apps in the iPhone app store, hundreds of thousands of songs in iTunes and similarly significant numbers of apps for Android.

The service currently offers users of both Android operating system and iOS and options to search for apps using the search engine but this new acquisition may see this change.

Apple had alluded to the fact that it would be updating both its App Store and iTunes some time later this year and this new acquisition seems geared towards making that happen.

Both stores have become over populated with content and it has become increasingly difficult for users to find what they are looking for.

Other App stores such as that of Verizon’s Android store front are also powered by Chomp and this leaves deals such as these hanging in the air.

The company’s CEO and CTO  Ben Keighran and Cathy Edwards have already joined Apple a member of the iTunes Marketing team and Senior iTunes Engineer respectively.

Apple has had a low-key track record in acquisitions always opting to either get the talent and build solutions themselves or head in a totally new direction by creating novel and previously un-thought-of solutions.

This is unlike Google which tends to have a voracious acquisition appetite but a less than stellar integration and streamlining history.

About Daniel Mbure

Daniel is a writer, strategist and serial tech entrepreneur. Follow Daniel on Twitter @thespianic