Intel in Your iPhone? Chipmaker Buys Infineon for $1.4B
Intel is back in the mobile chip business with the $1.4 billion purchase of the German-based Infineon’s wireless unit. Infineon provides smartphone chips for Apple’s iPhone, along with several other high-profile handsets.
The deal, expected to close in 2011, reportedly gives Intel up to four years of research and development time and places the chipmaking giant squarely in the smartphone market – a position it gave up when it sold its wireless unit to Marvell four years ago.
“The acquisition of Infineon’s wireless business strengthens the second pillar of our computing strategy — Internet connectivity — and enables us to offer a portfolio of products that covers the full range of wireless options,” Intel president and CEO Paul Otellini said Monday morning.
The news did not come as a surprise. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported the two companies were “close to a deal” to acquire Infineon for $2 billion.
It is unsure how Intel and Apple will co-exist under the new arrangement. The Cupertino, Calif. company opted against using Intel to power its iPhone, choosing instead Rival AMD. Apple then acquired chipmakers PA Semi and Intrinisity to build the A4 processor in the iPad and iPhone 4.
For its part, Intel in 2008 blasted the iPhone as incapable of fully accessing the Internet without the chip giant’s help.
[Silicon Alley Insider, All Things Digital]
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
