“Apple is in ‘advanced talks’ to acquire British chip design company Imagination Technologies, according to a source with knowledge of the discussions,” Sebastian Anthony reports for Ars Technica. “When Ars sought comment, Imagination Technologies refused to deny any such planned takeover.”
“Imagination Technologies is primarily known for its PowerVR line of GPUs, which Apple has used in its mobile A-series SoCs since the A4, which powered the iPhone 4 and 4th-gen iPod Touch,” Anthony reports. “In February this year, the company announced that longtime CEO Hossein Yassaie would be stepping down and that it would begin the process of restructuring the business. Then last week, in mid-March, the company announced that, as part of the restructuring, it would be axing 350 jobs and focusing on PowerVR.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Makes sense to bring it in-house if it’s such an integral technology and the company is struggling on its own.
You need to own all the critical technologies in your product. Period.
Apple already co-owns Imagination Technologies for many years. The fact that others co-own it did not stop Apple from being far ahead of competition in terms of actually implementing their designs in real SoCs. So, practically, such purchase would not make much difference, if any at all.
Another issue is that IT is co-owned by Apple’s major competitors. So to buy it all they have to agree with the buyout.
The best part of this is that you don’t have to sell to other phone manufacturers unless you want to.
Imagination Technologies also manufacture and sell the ‘Pure” range of digital radio receivers and internet radio receivers.
I don’t know how well they are known outside of Europe, but they are a well known brand of decent quality DAB radios. Many of their products are housed in distinctive cabinets available in a choice of real wood finishes.
Or this could be a pump and dump by some large equity holder
Yes please. It looks like a very good fit.