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Qualcomm may be eyeing Intel’s chip design business in an attempt to strengthen its foothold in the PC chipset market.
Qualcomm is reportedly mulling its options and considering buying parts of Intel’s business in an attempt to bolster its chipmaking endeavors. As part of this expansion, Qualcomm could acquire Intel’s chip design business to strengthen its presence in the segment of PC chips.
The news arrives less than a week after it was reported that Intel is looking to pawn off some of the assets to minimize losses. As part of its strategic plan, Intel may be looking to split its product design and manufacturing arms and sell some factory units.
Although Intel has traditionally been the leader in the segment, thanks to once-unshakable dominance in x86 chipsets for PCs, the company is now under pressure from competitors. While AMD has soared in popularity due to better value for money, ARM-based mobile chips have eroded the incumbents’ supremacy with more power-efficient chips.
Qualcomm has slowly established itself as the leading player in the ARM-based chipsets for Windows laptops, especially models aimed at competing with Apple’s Mac computers. Apple kicked off the adoption of ARM-based chips starting 2020 touting a massive performance uptick compared to the Intel chips it was previously relying on.
While Intel’s chip design business is of great significance to Qualcomm, the latter is eyeing the entirety of Intel’s design business, Reuters said. However, Intel declined any formal approaches from Qualcomm and abstained from disclosing any discussions with potential customers.
Qualcomm may have little interest in acquiring other arms, especially Intel’s server business. The mobile chipmaker has been exploring the possibility for months but has yet to solidify any plans, and could change, it was also reported.
Besides exploring options to sell parts of its business, Intel also plans to cut costs by up to $10 billion. In line with this, it cut 15,000 jobs (roughly 15% of its staff) last month after missing revenue targets for the quarter ending in June. The news resulted in Intel’s stock dipping to its lowest value since 2013, Bloomberg reported. As part of its cost-cutting bid, Intel has already sold off its shares in the UK-based chip design firm, Arm.
Meanwhile, Intel is now pegging its hopes on consumer-grade PC chips with enhanced AI performance. At the IFA trade show earlier this week, the company announced its new line of Intel Core Ultra 200 chips, codenamed “Lunar Lake.” With the new lineup, Intel claims better integrated graphics and AI performance without sacrificing on battery. Additionally, it looks to price these more attractively in an attempt to regain some of the market share lost to AMD and Qualcomm, CNBC reported.
