Todd Bishop
Apple (Apple) announced that it will acquire the smartphone chip business of chip manufacturer Intel for US$1 billion (approximately HK$7.8 billion) and move toward the goal of producing its own mobile phone chips. It is expected to complete the transaction in the fourth quarter of this year. Apple believes that the acquisition will help the development of future products, providing more performance than the opponent.
According to the transaction data, about 2,200 employees of Intel will join Apple, and intellectual property, equipment and leasing will also be included, so that Apple will have 17,000 wireless technology patents from mobile communication standards to data machines, increasing the company and Huawei. Wait for major 5G patent holders to negotiate bargaining chips for possible global mandates.
If Apple successfully acquires the smartphone chip business, it can acquire the expertise of the next-generation wireless technology 5G application. Intel has already developed the modem chip for the next generation 5G technology.
Apple has rarely made large-scale acquisitions in the past. As the iPhone business slowed, Apple began accepting larger deals, and the biggest deal so far was the acquisition of Beats Electronics in 2014, involving a total of $3 billion (approximately HK$23.4 billion).
