Apple's Intrinsity Acquisition: Winners and Losers



Intrinsity is not a name immediately recognized by today's average consumer. However, keen followers of the application processor market recognize its claim to fame as the firm behind the Cortex-A8 implementations (called the Hummingbird) in the Apple A4 and Samsung Galaxy S.

Apple's acquisition of the semiconductor firm Intrinsity has been doing the rounds on the Internet since the beginning of April. With many former Intrinsity employees publicly disclosing their employment with Apple now, Apple's quarterly earnings report indicating business acquisitions for $325 million, and NYTimes confirming the acquisition from Apple's side, the only unknown quantity in the whole transaction seems to be the amount shelled out by Apple for the purchase. The acquisition wasn't entirely unexpected once it was realized that PA Semi had nothing to do with the A4, and Apple had plans for the A4 family much beyond the iPad.
 




Microprocessor Report's Tom Halfhill has an excellent piece on why Apple wanted Intrinsity, and suggests that the purchase price was around $121 million. Another group of industry insiders, however, believe that Apple may have actually got a far better deal by completing the asset acquisition for a much lesser amount. How did Apple manage to gobble up Intrinsity? What is the cause for people's varied estimates of the purchase price, and why would both Apple and Intrinsity want to keep the purchase price a secret? How would the acquisition play out for the two companies, considering the fact that Apple's two previous semiconductor acquisitions haven't been especially successful? More importantly, what would the acquisition mean for the rest of the players in the market? Read on to find out the winners and losers in this transaction.



http://www.anandtech.com/show/3665/a...ers-and-losers