When in doubt, buy controlling interest to obtain the thing that you want.
Apple on Thursday revealed plans to acquire the majority of Intel’s smartphone modem business. Through the deal, more than 2,000 Intel staff will join Apple, the roughly $1 billion purchase transferring a number of patents to Apple as well
Following rumors that surfaced earlier in the week, both Apple and Intel have confirmed the existence of the deal. The two companies have worked together in previous years, including during Apple’s long-running legal dispute with chipmaker Qualcomm. Intel stated that it would exit the smartphone modem market after that dispute was resolved.
The deal is part of an effort to move chip development in-house for Apple. While the exact value of the transaction has not been made public at this time, the companies stated that 2,200 Intel staff would join Apple.
Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies, offered the following comments:
“Intel shares Apple’s passion for designing technologies that deliver the world’s best experiences for our users.” Apple is excited to have so many excellent engineers join our growing cellular technologies group, and know they’ll thrive in Apple’s creative and dynamic environment. They, together with our significant acquisition of innovative IP, will help expedite our development on future products and allow Apple to further differentiate moving forward.”
From his end, Intel CEO Bob Swan offered the following comments:
“This agreement enables us to focus on developing technology for the 5G network while retaining critical intellectual property and modem technology that our team has created. We have long respected Apple and we’re confident they provide the right environment for this talented team and these important assets moving forward. We’re looking forward to putting our full effort into 5G where it most closely aligns with the needs of our global customer base, including network operators, telecommunications equipment manufacturers and cloud service providers.”
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via The Mac Observer