Alex Web for Bloomberg Opinion:
It risks becoming Apple Inc.’s signature bait-and-switch move.
After years of developing technology with a supplier, the iPhone maker pulls the plug on the collaboration. It then buys up that business, which has limited prospects without Apple’s custom, and continues the development in-house.
It happened last year with Dialog Semiconductor Plc, the maker of power-management chips. This time it’s the turn, remarkably, of Intel Corp., the world’s second-largest semiconductor maker.
Apple is in talks to acquire Intel’s modem unit, technology website The Information reported on Tuesday… To be sure, Apple may be providing something of a soft landing for Intel… It’s reasonable to expect Apple to pay more than the $3 billion it spent acquiring Beats Electronics in 2014, its biggest-ever acquisition. But you can’t blame Intel if it feels a little used. As with many companies, Apple prefers to have a multi-supplier strategy where possible: playing them off against one another helps eke out lower component prices.
MacDailyNews Take: “Apple Inc.’s signature bait-and-switch move.” Or, in other words: Smart business.
Of course, Apple plays component suppliers, even incompetent ones like Intel, against their rivals to achieve lower prices; Apple would be foolish not to.
Sorry MDN, that is a poor character trait in my book. It will cost you in the long term. 2¢
If Intel had been able to meet deadlines and objectives Apple would never have taken this action after all it hardly planned to have to go relatively cap in hand to Qualcomm as a result of Intel’s failures I’m sure. Like dumping IBM way back it simply became a necessity not a deliberate self serving act. Buying Infineon is simply a way of reducing the effects on its own business longer term this debacle has forced upon it.
Imagine Apple selling modem chips to Samsung…..
or Huawei….
🙂
That would be sweet.
I see nothing nefarious by Apple because, it seems to me, Intel could not keep up with Qualscammer’s technology, thus compelling Apple to purchase it with the confidence that it can very well meet Qualcomm’s high standards or, conversely, Apple bought it defensively to prevent Q. from emassing nearly all existing modem tech. which, if the latter, could help Q. make the case to regulators that the existance if competing modem tech. does not make it into an abusive FRAND.
Ah, the Quallartist speaks…