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Apple may license haptic technology, called VibeTonz, from Immersion Corporation, according to an anonymous tipster - reported to be an Apple employee - who spoke with Palluxo. This would allow Apple to include vibration-based feedback in future versions of the iPhone.

Reportedly, Apple and Immersion held talks regarding a possible deal a couple of times last week.

Matters should be helped along by the appointment of former Apple exec Clent Richardson as the new president and CEO of Immersion. Richardson spent five years at Apple. Where he was the VP of worldwide developer relations & worldwide solutions marketing as well as the senior manager of evangelism.

Immersion's VibeTonz technology extends tactile feedback way beyond the capabilities of your typical vibrating cell phone. With it, an application developer can independently control both vibration strength and frequency for what Immersion calls high-fidelity touch sensations.

So, with VibeTonz, mobile games can deliver orchestrated touch feedback to enhance the gameplay experience, for example.

It can also be used to provide tactile cues for touch-screen interfaces; enhance handset operation by pairing audio/visual with tactile cues for events such as a dropped call and ringing; or make alerts more discernible by varying how they feel—from a reverberating gong effect to a subtle tapping.

Through VibeTonz, Apple could make the experience of using the iPhone's virtual keyboard much more real. So when you push one of the virtual keys, through haptics, you may actually end up feeling like you pressed a real one.

VibeTonz isn't new. It is a well-established technology.

Nokia licensed it from Immersion last summer for future phones, using the next-generation version of its S60 smartphone platform, which now supports touch screens. The first of these devices, called Tube, has been making the rounds through the Internet rumor mill.

LG and Samsung already include Immersion-based haptics in some of their mobile handsets. Samsung plans to do the same for its forthcoming Instinct touch-display handset from Sprint.

In all, over 10 million cell phones have shipped with VibeTonz feedback.

Apple isn't the first to consider bringing haptic feedback to the iPhone. A few months ago, some University of Glasgow PhD students, in the Computing Science Department, posted a prototype applet that promised a haptic experience for the iPhone's keyboard.