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Infineon Technologies has finally agreed to sell its wireless chip business to Intel.
The $1.4bn deal ends months of speculation that Intel would renew its attempts to enter the wireless chip market through an acquisition of the German chip company’s wireless chipset business.
Infineon does has design-ins with a number of big name mobile phone manufacturers.
"Infineon brings top-10 handset OEM relationships and valuable cellular radio modem expertise,” said Stephen Entwistle, v-p of strategic technology at market consultancy Strategy Analytics.
According to Entwhistle, Infineon is the 5th largest supplier of baseband chipsets to the mobile phone market, in revenue terms.
“Infineon was on track to potentially ship as many as 300 million basebands in 2010 based on our provisional estimates as Infineon's continues to expand at its key 2G and 3G customers," said Entwhistle.
As the technology and market drivers for microprocessors have moved from PCs to mobiles, Intel has recognised that it needs to win more chip business with mobile phone manufacturers.
It has been heavily promoting its Atom ranges of low power processors with limited results.
It had long been speculated that it was onlty a matter of time before it gave its mobile business a leg up by acquiring an established supplier of baseband chips.
For months Infineon’s chip business was seen as the most likely candidate. Now that has been confirmed.
"Intel is likely to keep Infineon's 2G business as it provides scale which is crucial to play in the cellular baseband segment,” said Sravan Kundojjala, handset component analyst.
The problem Intel has it will be competing with larger competitors, such as Qualcomm, MediaTek and ST-Ericsson. This is something it has not been familiar with the in the processor market for a very long time.
The $1.4bn deal ends months of speculation that Intel would renew its attempts to enter the wireless chip market through an acquisition of the German chip company’s wireless chipset business.
Infineon does has design-ins with a number of big name mobile phone manufacturers.
"Infineon brings top-10 handset OEM relationships and valuable cellular radio modem expertise,” said Stephen Entwistle, v-p of strategic technology at market consultancy Strategy Analytics.
According to Entwhistle, Infineon is the 5th largest supplier of baseband chipsets to the mobile phone market, in revenue terms.
“Infineon was on track to potentially ship as many as 300 million basebands in 2010 based on our provisional estimates as Infineon's continues to expand at its key 2G and 3G customers," said Entwhistle.
As the technology and market drivers for microprocessors have moved from PCs to mobiles, Intel has recognised that it needs to win more chip business with mobile phone manufacturers.
It has been heavily promoting its Atom ranges of low power processors with limited results.
It had long been speculated that it was onlty a matter of time before it gave its mobile business a leg up by acquiring an established supplier of baseband chips.
For months Infineon’s chip business was seen as the most likely candidate. Now that has been confirmed.
"Intel is likely to keep Infineon's 2G business as it provides scale which is crucial to play in the cellular baseband segment,” said Sravan Kundojjala, handset component analyst.
The problem Intel has it will be competing with larger competitors, such as Qualcomm, MediaTek and ST-Ericsson. This is something it has not been familiar with the in the processor market for a very long time.
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