On Friday afternoon, The Wall Street Journal reported Intel had been approached by fellow chip giant Qualcomm about a possible takeover. While any deal is described as “far from certain,” according to the paper’s unnamed sources, it would represent a tremendous fall for a company that had been the most valuable chip company in the world, based largely on its x86 processor technology that for years had triumphed over Qualcomm’s Arm chips outside of the phone space.
↫ Richard Lawler and Sean Hollister at The Verge
Either Qualcomm is only interested in buying certain parts of Intel’s business, or we’re dealing with someone trying to mess with stock prices for personal gain. The idea of Qualcomm acquiring Intel seems entirely outlandish to me, and that’s not even taking into account that regulators will probably have a thing or two to say about this. The one thing such a crazy deal would have going for it is that it would create a pretty strong and powerful all-American chip giant, which is a PR avenue the companies might explore if this is really serious.
One of the most valuable assets Intel has is the x86 architecture and the associated patents and licensing deals, and the immense market power that comes with those. Perhaps Qualcomm is interested in designing x86 chips, or, more likely, perhaps they’re interested in all that sweet, sweet licensing money they could extract by allowing more companies to design and sell x86 processors. The x86 market currently consists almost exclusively of Intel and AMD, a situation which may be leaving a lot of licensing money on the table.
Pondering aside, I highly doubt this is anything other than an overblown, misinterpreted story.