Online retailer Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is in
talks to buy the mobile chip business of Texas Instruments
Incorporated(NASDAQ:TXN), Israel's
financial newspaper, Calcalist said on Monday.
Amazon.com has already entered the tablet PC segment
and is rumoured to be entering the smartphone segment as well soon. Having its
own chip making business will put it in direct competition with technology
giants such as Samsung and Apple, both of which design their own chips.
Calcalist did not give any other details bout the
proposed transaction but said that the value of any deal would run into
billions of dollars.
Last month Texas Instruments had publicly said that it
wold shift its focus in the wireless segment to a broader market and away from
smartphones. It is looking at industrial clients such as in the automotive
sector where it hopes to get more stable business and better margins.
TI had also said that while it would continue to
support its customers, its mobile app chip business would not invest in supporting
customers' future roadmap for tablets and smartphones.
At present Amazon uses TI's chips for its kindle range
of tablets.
Chips are an important part of any computing device as
they dictate how powerful any such device would be and how fast it can run.
It has gained more importance in the case of tablet
PCs and smartphones which are now vying with traditional computing devices and
muscling into their territory.
Faster and powerful mobile devices that can do most of
the functions that are now reserved for laptops can well put the latter out of
business.
Shares of TXN are up over 2% in pre-market trading and
AMZN surged 0.51%.
No comments:
Post a Comment