Apple Confirms Purchase of Chipmaker Intrinsity
Apple is on an acquisition streak lately, and the latest one has just been confirmed on the heel of recent rumors.The New York Times has confirmed Apple’s purchase of Intrinsity, a small maker of fast chips for mobile devices based in Austin, Texas. The deal was actually closed late last month but only confirmed by Cupertino on Tuesday of this week, and marks the second time in as many years that Apple has purchased a small chip company in their pursuit of faster, more energy-efficient processors for their fleet of mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.“This adds another arrow to their quiver,” remarked chip analyst Tom R. Halfhill of Microprocessor Report. Halfhill’s industry contacts have pinned Apple’s acquisition price for Intrinsity at $121 million; Apple, as usual, declined to comment on that estimate.“The purchase price is like pocket change to Apple, and they get a lot of benefit,” Halfhill notes. Among the benefits: Handling “tough jobs” like playing video while using less battery power, which gives the company an edge over their rivals in the mobile space.It’s an edge the company will need as the competition ramps up and their mobile devices fall under more scrutiny. For instance, in late January when Apple CEO Steve Jobs finally unveiled the iPad after months of speculation, many analysts were more obsessed with what was inside the slate-like tablet rather than how it worked.Apple confirmed that the iPad featured a new custom chip called the A4, which they credited with giving the device better battery life and more processing power. At that time, the general consensus had been that the A4 chip was the work of Intrinsity, who has been working with a division of Samsung that manufactures the chips.Part of the A4 chip’s magic was taking a popular chip that usually runs at about 650MHz and ramping it up to 1,000MHz, which is what the iPad is running. If Intrinsity was indeed behind such magic, then Apple’s acquisition will give them a decided edge over the competition.Ironically, the Intrinsity buyout rumors were first noted when a number of employees had changed their LinkedIn employer information to Apple instead. Until now, neither company had a comment on the acquisition, which is seen as only one part of Apple’s broader strategy for ramping up their mobile device sales in the future.
http://www.maclife.com/article/news/apple_confirms_purchase_chipmaker_intrinsity
