“Amazon.Com Inc is in advanced talks to buy the supplier of chips for its Kindle tablet computer, Israeli financial newspaper Calcalist reported on Monday, in what could mark a step in the company’s ambitions in the smartphone sector,” Tova Cohen and Tarmo Virki report for Reuters.
“The report said any deal for the smartphone chip business of Texas Instruments Inc (TI) would probably be worth billions of dollars and could make Amazon a direct rival to Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, which also design their own chips,” Cohen and Virki report. “‘With the trend towards more vertical integration, led by Apple, speculation that Amazon is interested in TI’s chipset arm is unsurprising,’ said Ben Wood, head of research at British wireless consultancy CCS Insight.”
Cohen and Virki report, “But some analysts questioned whether it would make sense for Amazon to spend billions on the business when many smaller and independent smartphone chip makers are reporting steep losses. TI has flagged its plans to exit the business. Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi said she doubted whether Amazon wants to ‘become that intimately involved with hardware.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Even Bezos isn’t that self-delusional – or is he?
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]