Amazon in talks to buy Texas Instruments' smartphone & tablet OMAP business

[Top100EbooksRank]

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/1...tivity-report/

Texas Instruments (TI), which recently announced that it will wind down its operations in smartphone and tablet oriented OMAP chips and instead focus on embedded platforms, is engaged in ‘advanced negotiations’ to sell that particular line of business to one of its largest customers: Amazon.com.

Such a deal would be worth ‘billions of dollars’.

The news was reported by Assaf Gilad from Calcalist.co.il (in Hebrew), but hasn’t been confirmed by either company at this point. Gilad has a track record of getting stories like this exactly right, by the way. He was first to report Apple’s interest in Israeli fabless semiconductor company and flash storage solutions provider Anobit, for example, and we know what happened next.

According to the report, Amazon.com is looking to acquire TI’s high-end processor activity so it can exert more control over the chips running its Kindle Fire tablets and the accompanying smartphones it probably has in the works.

[fjtorres]

Well, Amazon is a firm believer in in-housing core technologies...
I wonder how much in the way of IP is included in the deal? Especially telecom patents...

[rdjack21]

I would be surprised if any patents are included at all considering that they are just looking to purchase the OMAP processors.

[SeaKing]

Amazon and Google grow and grow!

It's got to worry Apple.

"Fuller Brushes" did well for a long time, and then...

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by rdjack21

I would be surprised if any patents are included at all considering that they are just looking to purchase the OMAP processors.

But the processor themselves will be useless without at least some IP coverage in the deal. TI has extensive cross-licensing deals in place with other telecom and semiconductor vendors, Amazon doesn't. And OMAP itself is mostly IP anyway; the CPU core is just another licensed ARM design.
More, though: we don't know *what* they are supposed to be buying. It could be the design alone or the design and staff or the whole operation including the aging facilities. Its just a sketchy rumor.
But if Amazon is spending "billions", they'll likely be getting "billions" worth of value. And the aging foundries aren't necessarily part of the deal. TI can still use them for their other products while Amazon could contract out for manufacturing separately as Microsoft and Apple do.

What is in the deal--if it is more than a rumor--will tell us what Amazon is up to.
And since Amazon is so secretive, reading the tea leaves is the only way to even guess what they intend to do.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Top100EbooksRank

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/1...tivity-report/

I wonder what implications this has for the future of beagleboards and pandaboards.

[RainingLemur]

Originally Posted by SeaKing

It's got to worry Apple.

For the time being, I doubt it. As long as their mobile things sell like gangbusters the way they do, it's not going to be much of a concern for them.

Maybe get a couple of suits to stifle here and there, but I can't see this happening and Apple heads sitting in their war-room saying "Uh oh, guys. This is gonna be a serious problem. Better nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure."