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Intel To Buy Smartphone Chipmaker Infineon For $2B

Posted by timothy on from the whatta-boggin dept.

sylverboss writes "Intel Corp., the world's largest chipmaker, is close to an agreement to buy Infineon Technologies AG's wireless business, three people with direct knowledge of the discussions said. When it comes to desktop, laptop and server chips, Intel's pretty much got a lock on the market but everyone can see the writing on the wall: mobile chips and architectures are the future of computing thanks to the popularity of smartphones, but Intel doesn't have anything to offer in that regard. Don't know Infineon? You should: they are the guys who have supplied Apple with their iPhone baseband chips since 2007."

8 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Infineon? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "they are the guys who have supplied Apple with their iPhone baseband chips since 2007."

    Does that really mean they're important, though?

    1. Re:Infineon? by forkazoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "they are the guys who have supplied Apple with their iPhone baseband chips since 2007."

      Does that really mean they're important, though?

      Not in isolation, no. It is, OTOH, an example of a very high profile contract, which suggests that they are sufficiently stable in the rest of their business that Apple would be willing to trust doing business with them, without having to fear them suddenly going bankrupt and cutting off supply of a key part. Given that the company is important enough that it would be impossible to list every example of a device that uses an Infineon chip in tfS, the iPhone was probably the most effective example to use.

    2. Re:Infineon? by klingens · · Score: 5, Informative

      Infineon hasn't made RAM for 4 years now when they spun off Qimonda. Qimonda itself went bankrupt early 2009.

  2. Re:What about RAMBUS? by DDDKKK · · Score: 5, Informative

    Rambus does not produce RAM. They develop and license RAM related technologies. Infineon is one of the licensees (as is Intel).

  3. Re:What about RAMBUS? by klingens · · Score: 5, Informative

    No it doesn't. Infineon hasn't made RAM in a long time. They sold off their RAM business in 2006 naming it "Qimonda". in January 2009 Qimonda declared bankruptcy.

  4. Not the entire company by MtHuurne · · Score: 5, Informative

    Contrary to what the headline suggests, Intel is not buying all of Infineon: they are negotiating to buy the wireless division.

  5. Escrow arrangements are probably in place. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'd be surprised if Apple didn't have the key IP in Third-party escrow, so if they
    go belly-up or get bought by Microsoft Apple can still get the chips they need.

  6. About Infineon by dmesg0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    If Infineon doesn't ring a bell to someone, the name Siemens surely does. Infineon was the semiconductor division of Siemens, before being spun off into a separate company.

    Infineon's current market cap is around 5B, so Intel is rumored to buy about 1/3 of the company (assuming some premium over the stock price).