https://liliputing.com/2016/10/qualcomm-acquire-nxp-47-billion.htmlDo you remember Freescale? Used to foundry a lot of chips, Freescale did. Was a very early IoT supplier, made chipsets for hobby boards and routers and VCRs and stuff like that?
Started to actually build significant Quad Core big little chipsets and then Freescale got snapped up by NXP, who was very strong in automotive dash systems, radar and the like -- the combination making up a leading player in automotive who was duking things out with Nvidia all the time with NXP losing in some of the recent contests?
Well, guess who just snapped up NXP for just a little less than twice what NXP had to pay for Freescale? Yep, Qualcomm.
What you see is Qualcomm, looking into the phone future and seeing a second and a third 800 pound phone gorilla coming up out of the gorilla pack -- two of them having big advantages over Qualcomm since they control their OS systems and Qualcomm does not.
Qualcomm also sees the phone pie's growth leveling off worldwide now, and going negative in Europe and the USA as last year's phone is fine, thank you very much.
So, Qualcomm is not stupid, nor prideful, nor are they slow mentally. MediaTek is squeezing them strongly from below. MediaTek has up and coming chipsets that are actually getting up into the premium zone now. MediaTek and Samsung have new arrangements for Samsung to stop building mid-range and lower products and just use MediaTek chipsets. Samsung is Qualcomm's current foundry supplier, and Samsung understands Snapdragon all the way down to the silicon etching needed to make it work. Sammy needs a big rabbit out of the hat for next summer, and they have lines to convert to 7nm, etc. etc.
Sammy is busy doing things that will push Qualcomm from the side some more in the phone arena next year.Apple is showing signs of a renovation in phones and laptops as a result of Intel's dialing down. Apple has clearly moved out in front of the pack again, by at least 1 full lithography and design generation, shortly to be 1.5 generations. Apple has lots of cash to fuel their renovation plans and they can disrupt the order of things by simply moving suppliers around, something they like to do just about yearly. \ Apple just made the vendor moves that turned Sammy into a lean, mean junkyard dog just in time for next year's slug fest.
Google has stopped being Switzerland and has become a competitor at the very top end of things. This is good, as long as they buy Qualcomm chipsets.
But Google has a habit of buying the very best price/feature mix for each level of phone that they make, and they always make two levels of phones now. Seeing MediaTek show up as the lower part of some of these phone pair ups wouldn't shock me for too much.
MediTek is already working with Google on Chromebooks, so the communications channels and active cooperation between the two already exist.
Remember, Google has and will use a Samsung chipset
if it it a clear winner, and Samsung has access to 7nm Germanium laced tech through the IBM/Global/Samsung tech consortium. And Sammy has both the motivation and the time right now to go work on it, hard.
So, what does it all mean ????
The pie is shrinking and the hungry dogs are getting ready to spill each others blood to get some more of that shrinking pie.
So, proactively, Qualcomm has just laid them out a non-phone growth strategy that they are going to pursue while they are still strong enough to TAKE some turf away from the existing players who are already sitting in those new markets. Qualcomm is now starting to move over into new growing markets, car dash systems, self driving systems, vision systems, etc. etc. NXP is their fire sale bought crowbar to use to get these doors pried partially open, as NXP has an approved PPAP'd supplier base and NXP is currently a qualified supplier to most of the brands of futuristic type car systems.
Qualcomm owns the patents for most of the communications, radios, etc. that are used in these futuristic items, so that is also a big advantage for NXP now as Qualcomm doesn't have to pay itself the royalty tax that all the rest of the players do have to pay.
Please note,
Qualcomm picks up a smaller but fairly modern foundry in the deal, something they may have a use for as it is already up and running making modern automotive chipsets and is all used to all the automotive quality requirements.
It can certainly make IoT chipsets as it also does that already.
Since Qualcomm isn't really leaving anything yet, this is really just diversification, which is kinda expensive, but a good thing to do if you are able to move over into a growing market situation and grow right along with it.
IoT is growing, rapidly, and so is Automotive. These are good moves for Qualcomm, and very bad news for poor old Intel, who just made the same moves as a forced putt because Qualcomm and everybody else was taking turns kicking their butt over in Consumer Computing.
Well Intel, guess who just moved over into the new school where you had just moved to, just to get away from them bad bad boys ???
Poor baby, look to see your head go back into the toilet for a brand new swirly hairdo very shortly ......
Pages: 
