Trefis: Apple’s Intrinsity deal is a Snapdragon slayer

“Apple recently acquired Intrinsity for around $120 million according to industry insider estimates quoted by The New York Times,” Trefis blogs for Forbes. “Intrinsity makes mobile phone application processors and competes with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon, nVidia’s Tegra2, Intel’s Atom and Texas Instrument’s OMAP 4. These application processors give mobile phones and other mobile devices the computing power to run more sophisticated software and videos.”

“We believe the Intrinisity acquisition could benefit Apple with faster iPhone market share growth, while Qualcomm could be negatively impacted,” Trefis writes. “The iPhone 3GS has processor speeds that are currently around 600 MHz. Intrinsity’s processor speeds have touched 1GHz making it one of the fastest mobile phone processors along with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor. In addition to high speed processing, Intrinsity processors use less battery power making it ideal for use in mobile devices (like the iPhone) where battery consumption is crucial.”

Trefis writes, “Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor has seen gradual adoption and smartphones like Google’s Nexus One, LG’s eXpo, and the recently launched HTC Incredible are using it. However, with Apple expected to gain more market share, it could come at the expense of Qualcomm’s customers which could see stagnation or decline in their market shares. This will affect Qualcomm negatively as it will mean fewer sales of its Snapdragon processors.”

Full article here.