News Qualcomm approached Intel about acquisition, report claims

[Admin]

Qualcomm reportedly approached Intel to discuss a takeover, but a deal is "far from certain."

Qualcomm approached Intel about acquisition, report claims : Read more

 

[Dustyboy1492]

Go home Qualcomm you're drunk. Qaulcomm 38 billion in revenue, Intel 58 billion. Maybe Intel will buy you? Even if all the stars aligned this would never pass the anti-trust case in the US or China. Just trolling for Qualcomm.

 

[why_wolf]

"Additionally, Intel and AMD have cross-licensed their respective x86 IP. In the event of an acquisition, it's possible one or both of the companies could lose access to key portions of the platform. This would surely be a significant point of any negotiation in an attempt to take over Intel."

Qualcomm wants that chaos. If it can hamstring AMD with patent "negotiations" they could then push their ARM CPUs with no competition in the PC space.

Money wise this is a crazy poison pill kind of deal that would saddle the new company with so much debt it could never escape.

 

[ThomasKinsley]

It's clear Qualcomm wants to lead the desktop market. What's not clear is if Intel is willing to hand over the x86 license.

 

[baboma]

For those wanting to read the original WSJ piece, which is by far preferable to the THW rehash, then use the tech aggregator Techmeme.com and click on the WSJ link from there. Techmeme apparently has an agreement w/ WSJ to allow click-thru with full content.

Anyway, this rumor falls into the wishful whimsy category. Given the recent chips-n-fabs arms race between US and China Intel is too critical a company to be allowed to fail, or be acquired/merged with any other company. Its importance and vast marketshare in the tech markets (in addition to Qualcomm's in mobile) would also nix any deal from the market consolidation standpoint. Read it for entertainment.

 

[Amdlova]

That's just a dream... The American gov will give to intel the market of 1 Tri "The war machine". Fabs on other countries will be canceled one by one. They will focus only on American market.

 

[JamesJones44]

Go home Qualcomm you're drunk. Qaulcomm 38 billion in revenue, Intel 58 billion. Maybe Intel will buy you? Even if all the stars aligned this would never pass the anti-trust case in the US or China. Just trolling for Qualcomm.

Market cap is the more important metric when looking at public company acquisitions. Intel's market cap is 90 Billion vs Qualcomm's 193 Billion. Qualcomm could do it with a small amount of cash and a 0.50 QComm shares per Intel share for example which would create a 283 billion dollar company roughly. Share delusion and other things would come into play, but these types of acquisitions have happened in the past. I found a link that does a nice job of explaining stock deals. However, it doesn't need to be one or the other, companies can do a mix of stock and cash to acquire company.

https://www.moneyland.ch/en/all-sto...s all-stock deal,as payment, rather than cash.

 

[JamesJones44]

Given the recent chips-n-fabs arms race between US and China Intel is too critical a company to be allowed to fail, or be acquired/merged with any other company. Its importance and vast marketshare in the tech markets (in addition to Qualcomm's in mobile) would also nix any deal from the market consolidation standpoint. Read it for entertainment

To critical to fail I agree with. However, a shotgun wedding to save the company would not be out of the question or norm. Remember the US government did this with Chrysler and Fait back in 2008. In this case it would be a shotgun wedding with two US companies, it might just go through, but I agree it's a long shot.

 

[Root Canal]

Please name the new company AOL-Time-Warner

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

You know what would be hilarious, if Qualcomm & nVIDIA was able to buy a x86 License from Intel & AMD to compete directly on x86 CPU's.

That would be a very interesting turn of events.

 

[baboma]

>However, a shotgun wedding to save the company would not be out of the question or norm.

I haven't read of any indication--from reputable business rags, not clickbait blogs--that Intel is a failing company. Cash crunch, yes, imminent bankruptcy, no.

Its major cash drain is the build-outs for its fabs--that and bloated payroll, and complacency/turgidity that comes from being a long-time incumbent (eg Google). Chopping payroll and delaying builds are all prudent actions to address those. The rest hopefully would come from restructuring, incentivized by investor ire and lawsuits (raises hand).

Intel's upcoming consumer products (LNL & ARL) have had positive news and reception, and future product plans per leaks look to be strong. Admittedly, I don't follow the data center & AI arena, which are more important than the consumer side from the financial standpoint.

>US government did this with Chrysler and Fait back in 2008

Chrysler and Fiat are relative small fries. Both Intel and Qualcomm are dominant players in their respective markets, and their merging would create a super-monopoly. Given the aggressive anti-trust actions and current antipathy against Big Tech, this notion is DOA. I'm surprised that WSJ even reported it.

OTOH, Intel stocks did get a bump from the rumor, so it's all good.

 

[Stomx]

Why Qualcomm needs this old tech X86/Microsoft when their ARM/Android(Linux) already almost knocked them out of water ? Here is better idea to Qualcomm. Capitalize on its own advantages in efficient silicon and step into server/AI business with its absurd margins. QCOM will easily kick Intel and AMD out of business creating 200-400 and more core server chips. And with 500 cores CPUs will be competitive with GPUs. Got what that means? Means its next kill will be NVIDIA.

 

[ezst036]

Why Qualcomm needs this old tech X86/Microsoft when their ARM/Android(Linux) already almost knocked them out of water ?

Qualcomm can't even figure out how to deliver a mobo or put its CPUs into sockets. They got a long way before getting mainstream on desktops and gaming.

That's why they need Intel.

 

[dimar]

Right, and then AMD will buy Qualcomm a year later.

 

[pug_s]

Go home Qualcomm you're drunk. Qaulcomm 38 billion in revenue, Intel 58 billion. Maybe Intel will buy you? Even if all the stars aligned this would never pass the anti-trust case in the US or China. Just trolling for Qualcomm.

Qualcomm wants to buy parts of Intel, not all of Intel. IMO, Qualcomm is like a vulture picking off from the corpse.

 

[scottslayer]

Right, and then AMD will buy Qualcomm a year later.

There's always a bigger fish.

 

[jlake3]

Why Qualcomm needs this old tech X86/Microsoft when their ARM/Android(Linux) already almost knocked them out of water ? Here is better idea to Qualcomm. Capitalize on its own advantages in efficient silicon and step into server/AI business with its absurd margins. QCOM will easily kick Intel and AMD out of business creating 200-400 and more core server chips. And with 500 cores CPUs will be competitive with GPUs. Got what that means? Means its next kill will be NVIDIA.

• Qualcomm's market share in PCs is tiny. I can't find good numbers for after the X Elite's launch, but non-Apple ARM laptops/desktops appear to be in the single digit percentages as recently as June.
• Qualcomm bought a promising startup that was designing server CPUs. They cancelled their server plans and pivoted their core designs to laptops instead.
  • Qualcomm previously tried to get into servers from 2014-2017. It didn't work out.
  • AMD and Intel have 192 and 244 core offerings respectively, that should be released inside of 6 months. Early samples may already be in the hands of major clients. Qualcomm isn't going to beat the proven names in the server business to 200 cores.
  • Ampere, an ARM-based datacenter CPU company, is facing some headwinds with going public and raising money because of increased competition in the space, and they're an established player in the server market that has 192-core models out and a 256-core model coming soon.
• CPU cores and GPU cores are not interchangeable, and in things that can run on GPUs, GPUs tend to absolutely run away from them in both performance and efficiency.
  • Nvidia's dominance has also been fueled by the popularity of CUDA, and both Intel and AMD have struggled to breach that moat.

 

[TJ Hooker]

"Additionally, Intel and AMD have cross-licensed their respective x86 IP. In the event of an acquisition, it's possible one or both of the companies could lose access to key portions of the platform. This would surely be a significant point of any negotiation in an attempt to take over Intel."

Qualcomm wants that chaos. If it can hamstring AMD with patent "negotiations" they could then push their ARM CPUs with no competition in the PC space.

Money wise this is a crazy poison pill kind of deal that would saddle the new company with so much debt it could never escape.

Any intellectual property disputes would presumably cut both ways (i.e. both Intel and AMD would be impacted). Why would Qualcomm make a huge investment in x86 by purchasing Intel, only to immediately, deliberately hamstring that investment? That'd be way too big a purchase for them to just kill off for the benefit of their existing products.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Given the recent chips-n-fabs arms race between US and China Intel is too critical a company to be allowed to fail, or be acquired/merged with any other company.

Qualcomm is also a US company. The feds just want to make sure they have a strong, domestic chip design & fab industry, I don't see why they'd care which particular US companies are running it.

 

[bigdragon]

I would assume Qualcomm wants Intel's foundry operations -- not the rest of the company. This would let them get further away from relying upon TSMC and reduce the cost of producing their chips. The foundry business could boom if geopolitical tensions continue to rise.

However, I hate the idea of big companies merging or subdividing to sell off pieces. This usually always goes badly after a few years. Jobs are lost, industries contract, and prices go up. The FTC cannot allow such a merger to go through if it does become real.

 

[mac_angel]

Kinda sounds like Blizzard-Activision-Microsoft in the ways of "antitrust", but it still happened.

 

[JamesJones44]

Chrysler and Fiat are relative small fries. Both Intel and Qualcomm are dominant players in their respective markets, and their merging would create a super-monopoly. Given the aggressive anti-trust actions and current antipathy against Big Tech, this notion is DOA. I'm surprised that WSJ even reported it.

The original idea was to shotgun merge Chrysler with GM before Fait came along. Let's not forget those things were being explored under Obama's administration which has a similar anti-trust stance as today's administration. The point wasn't to say it would happen, the point was, when the government is desperate, they are more than happy to look the other way regardless of the type of dominance a merger could make.

At any rate, I agree the environment is not the same as it was back then, which is why my comment continues with, "I agree it's a long shot".

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/business/11auto.html