This is like Oracle buying Sun. Qualcomm is a famously litigious company. They'd decimate the workforce and rely on Intel's patent portfolio to make the takeover worth it
No idea who might be infringing on what, but I'm quite sure Qualcomm's lawyers would quickly figure out which companies they'll put the squeeze on. Or just throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. AMD, Apple (think Rosetta), TSMC, cloud providers, etc.
Intel is 1/3 of AMD by market cap but 6x the employee, that's 18x difference. If QCOM takes over INTC, they might need let a LOT go to revamp it, like 80% of them.
It's not happening though, an acquisition of Intel means the end of x86 due to cross-licensing terms between Intel and AMD which stipulate they all terminate upon either party being acquired.
Granted, Qualcomm has interests in ARM so this might actually be what they want: Embrace, No Extending, Extinguish.
> an acquisition of Intel means the end of x86 due to cross-licensing terms between Intel and AMD which stipulate they all terminate upon either party being acquired
I believe Intel's licenses to AMD's IP would terminate, but not the other way around.
Intel and AMD literally cannot manufacture x86 CPUs without the other, their cross-licensing and dependencies go both ways beyond amd64.
If Qualcomm somehow actually convinces Intel to sell, that means Intel is immediately out of business because all they (could) make are x86 CPUs. AMD would likewise become a zombie overnight with only their Radeon GPUs remaining on their catalog.
It's far more likely for AMD to come and bail Intel out if things really came to that.
What's embarassing about this is that Qualcomm could actually go and ask Intel if they're selling without it sounding like a complete joke. That signifies how far Intel has fallen, Qualcomm trolled Intel and actually got away with it.
Whoever wants to buy out Intel needs to convince both Intel and AMD that the subsequent arrangement will be better than the monopoly-but-not-a-monopoly they enjoy today.
I'm willing to bet AMD would sooner spend money bailing Intel out to keep that going first before entertaining thoughts about sharing their cake.
Setting aside the political reasons for less advertising revenue, it's still running and there are 200M DAU. Many ex-employees swore the servers would catch fire by now.
> Many ex-employees swore the servers would catch fire by now.
They've 'caught on fire' many times, such as the time login/2fa broke, or the weeks/months where you were rate-limited to only a few hundred interactions per day.
Wrong. A substantial number of advertisers dropped X.com because it isn't brand safe (for example their ads are located next to racist or Nazi or pornographic content). A substantial number of the staff let go were involved in keeping the site brand safe.
Aren't the two disconnected? The revenue lost is a result of advertisers not wanting to be connected to Musk's politics. Downsizing isn't what caused that.
Musk got rid of the people who owned the relationships with the brands and agencies that drove the ad revenue. Burning those relationships plus getting rid of content moderators made sure advertisers were very skeptical of being on the platform. Then there's the GARM lawsuit causing that tiny org to shut down, suing another non-profit for point out brand safety issues, etc.
I thought the advertisers pulling out was more a direct result of the tweets he posted or liked. Perhaps those relationships were strained already due to what you've pointed out, but I don't know that those employees could have made a difference in relation to those posts.
Firing the teams that manage moderation and letting Coca-Cola and Nike paid for ads show along side Nazi and porn content, basically allowing the ad side of the platform to go to shit, is actually much of the reason for the advertiser exodus.
I'm starting to see ads during Great Replacement and Kill The Brown People threads on Twitter. It's not pushing me towards buying a product or clicking an ad.
Twitter is just a relatively simple website, though. They aren’t doing anything particularly complex or innovative and aren’t releasing any new products.
It could survive for years in maintenance mode as long as people continue using it.
Letting go of 80%of intel’s employees and the company is dead in weeks other than a skeleton crew of lawyers, bean counters, and top level execs stuffing their golden parachutes with maximum parachute.
Only mentioned it abut two weeks ago [1] it would be great if Qualcomm buy it as whole and not certain parts. And two months [2] ago about Intel being attractive as an acquisition target.
Qualcomm currently has close to zero Server revenue. And they have already failed twice to enter that market. Intel on the other hand has plenty of expertise and network. Potential synergy with GPU for a top to bottom mobile to datacenter GPU design. There isn't a single GPU vendor who does that currently. Qualcomm also has the expertise in both Digital and Analog custom chip design which is extremely useful for telling the Intel Fabs what they need to work and deliver on.
Qualcomm is probably the top 5 most hated company on HN. This skewed most opinions, but they were also the number 1 spot on spending R&D to revenue ratio in the tech sector for many years.
I would have been 100% supportive of the move if Steve Mollenkopf was still the CEO or at least Chairman of Qualcomm. But I guess he will now be very busy at Boeing. Not so sure about current CEO Cristiano Amon if he could lead the new Qualcomm + Intel.
Why would less competition and more market concentration be good for the US semiconductor industry?
It's not like Qualcomm has been the most innovative company ever, they make ARM/Cortex based chips (which is almost a commodity) and control the baseband/modem market because of their patents, so unlike Intel the have basically no competition.
The thought is that if there is an acquisition it might lead to more silicon volume running through Intel’s US based fabs. Of course, Qualcomm might decide to shut the fabs down but that is a whole other story.
That was a much smaller deal though. A Chinese regulatory block for a $5B acquisition might rise to "not worth it" to Intel. Saying "No more x86 laptops or qualcomm radios in China" is more of a "Trade War!" kind of thing.
That's not saying the China would love it, or that they wouldn't have leverage. But regulatory power has its limits and it's not like every nation gets a veto on every merger.
If you bought one shared near the end of 1998, you would have paid around $30. That share would be worth around $22 now. So, you would have gained around $9 not accounting for reinvestment of dividends.
Not a good return on investment, in comparison, but you picked 1998 in the middle of the dot com boom. If you picked the end of 1995, you'd have paid $7 and have around $40 today, which isn't too much worse of a return than the S&P 500.
This isn't to say Intel hasn't been poorly managed, by the way.
You can't just look at the stock price. INTC has split and had dividends since 1998.
If you bought $10,000 of INTC in Sept 19th, 1998 and held it to today the stock would be worth $17,000 and you would've collected almost $12,000 in dividends.
Is there any site that shows historical stock graphs with an option to include dividend reinvestment and adjust for inflation? Practically every online conversation about stock returns makes these mistakes.
Yes, think if you have invested in Bitcoin when it was announced on Slashdot. The problem with cherry picking dates is that we don't have a time machine yet.
> failed to get any sort of traction in phones or tablets
And had they stuck with XScale it I don't think it would be surprising if they ended up in Qualcomm's current position (default high-end ARM CPU maker). Yet they consciously decided to throw it all away..
With the stock split and dividends reinvested, the $1 would now be worth $1.64, _not_ inflation adjusted. You'd still be in bad shape if you inflation adjust - the $1 with inflation would be $1.93. So you've still lost money overall, alas.
If you didn't reinvest the dividends you'd be ahead, though. Which is kind of ironic - but you'd have taken out a fair bit of money from 2016-2022 when the price was high.
I can attest to it, the value hasn't grown much in my inactive portfolio. This portfolio was set up as set it and forget it in 1999. I will need to run a realized gain/loss statement.
More than 10 years and that's why Intel's stock price fell so precipitously as Intel cancelled that dividend and Intel losing its dividend focused luster to dividends focused investors!
But the amount of Folks that comment on these Mergers & Acquisitions(M&A) sorts of articles and the US regulations regarding M&As and the main litmus test for rejection there being if that Acquisition will reduce the competitive landscape of Intended market players that compete in that market!
And So Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and previous Windows on ARM Laptop/PC products are more direct competition to Intel's/AMD's Windows on x86 products! Linux on ARM as well, as Tuxedo Laptops(Linux OS Based OEM) is planning on releasing a Snapdragon X Elite Linux OS based laptop!
That and Intel only controls the IP surrounding the x86 32 bit/Earlier 16/8 bit parts of the x86 ISA while AMD's the IP owner of the x86 64 bit ISA extensions! But Intel and AMD have a cross licensing agreement between them for their respective parts of the x86 ISA IP rights and so Intel has no legal right to transfer AMD's x86 64 bit ISA extensions License to any third party and ditto for AMD and any of the 32 bit earlier parts of the x86 ISA that are Intel's IP.
Qualcomm or any other competitor in the CPU/dGPU market will not be able to get past the regulators easily and Nvidia can not acquire Intel because of Intel's Discrete GPU market presence where Intel's ARC/Later Discrete GPUs are a welcome 3rd player attempt at the low end to mainstream dGPU market place Competition against AMD and Nvidia!
No idea who might be infringing on what, but I'm quite sure Qualcomm's lawyers would quickly figure out which companies they'll put the squeeze on. Or just throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. AMD, Apple (think Rosetta), TSMC, cloud providers, etc.