Imagination is a publicly traded company and has a responsibility to inform its shareholders of any changes that affect the company at such scale.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Imagination Tech Shares Plunge as Apple Ends Deal With British Firm
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Imagination is a publicly traded company and has a responsibility to inform its shareholders of any changes that affect the company at such scale.
Besides PA Semi, Apple has acquired what appear to be several semiconductor companies, and even at least one GPU company, albeit back in 1999.
Personally, none of that means anything to me—unless there's a new acquisition that crops up—except for their success with their A-series, S-series, T-series, and W-series processors, SoCs, and SIPs. None of this sounds far fetched for them to do internally to even make their devices even better optimized.
Personally, none of that means anything to me—unless there's a new acquisition that crops up—except for their success with their A-series, S-series, T-series, and W-series processors, SoCs, and SIPs. None of this sounds far fetched for them to do internally to even make their devices even better optimized.
That would be a very dangerous thing to do. Smells like market manipulation, which can get you some time in jail. I think we can just about guarantee that Apple will _not_ buy Imagination.
It basically means that If Apple will release their own hardware with their own designed GPU this year, then in two years, after two upcoming refreshes on iPhone lineup, Apple will not be using Imagination Technologies IP, at all.
I will be VERY interested to see what Apple will come with on both high and low-level in terms of Architecture.
P.S. SemiAccurate has written about this 3 years ago:
http://semiaccurate.com/2014/03/25/details-apples-gpu-emerge/
http://semiaccurate.com/2013/01/02/apples-silicon-design-capabilities-increase/
I will be VERY interested to see what Apple will come with on both high and low-level in terms of Architecture.
P.S. SemiAccurate has written about this 3 years ago:
http://semiaccurate.com/2014/03/25/details-apples-gpu-emerge/
http://semiaccurate.com/2013/01/02/apples-silicon-design-capabilities-increase/
Last edited:
A company can always change their mind down the road without it being illegal or unethical, but it certainly would look bad, if they did that.
That said, let's say that in less than a year Apple realizes they bit off more than they can chew—they can always purchase another year of licensing or they could try to buy the company outright. In either case there will be an announcement for shareholders, and if it's a purchase you'd probably see the shares jump up the difference it's lost this morning.
Apple won't get it for cheap, and I'm honestly not sure if they can be bought out without a major fight if Saad Group our of Saudi Arabia still has more than a 2x stake over Apple.
PS:Lets remember that Apple stake is now only worth about 3% of what it was on Friday, so they are certainly affected unless they sold short (which is improbable).
OT: I remember when people said that Apple buying PA Semi was dumb. I remember when people said the iPod was a dumb idea for a computer company. So many dumb ideas have been game changers for Apple.
Last edited:
I have a feeling Apple's poaching of Imagination Technologies' engineers may have something to do with this...
Seeing how Apple already designs it's own CPU cores it's not exactly a massive leap forward for them to being designing their own GPUs and as with all modern computer hardware, it takes years from the drawing board to a product on store shelves. If the first in-house designed GPUs are coming out in a couple of years that probably means that they're well on their way in designing the things and a year from sending the first finished designs to manufacturing.
This definitely does suck for Imagination Technologies because Apple is right now their only really big customer. ARM has most of the embedded GPU IP market with their Mali series and the biggest chip vendor Qualcomm has their own Adreno GPUs. Because of this they're probably going to have to try to sell their IP even harder to smaller chip vendors like Mediatek and other companies who make their own SoCs like Samsung.
However let's not go to hard on the doom and gloom theme as they've been here before. Just before they got the contract with Apple their then biggest customer, Texas Instruments, pulled out of the SoC business after Nokia moved from their chips to Qualcomm's (as part of their failed Windows phone line).
Seeing how Apple already designs it's own CPU cores it's not exactly a massive leap forward for them to being designing their own GPUs and as with all modern computer hardware, it takes years from the drawing board to a product on store shelves. If the first in-house designed GPUs are coming out in a couple of years that probably means that they're well on their way in designing the things and a year from sending the first finished designs to manufacturing.
This definitely does suck for Imagination Technologies because Apple is right now their only really big customer. ARM has most of the embedded GPU IP market with their Mali series and the biggest chip vendor Qualcomm has their own Adreno GPUs. Because of this they're probably going to have to try to sell their IP even harder to smaller chip vendors like Mediatek and other companies who make their own SoCs like Samsung.
However let's not go to hard on the doom and gloom theme as they've been here before. Just before they got the contract with Apple their then biggest customer, Texas Instruments, pulled out of the SoC business after Nokia moved from their chips to Qualcomm's (as part of their failed Windows phone line).
Well let's hope it isn't S for 'Sales Suspended Due To Legal Action', and Apple and Imagination can come to an adult agreement regarding patent licensing.
Bad news for Imagination, but the writing has been on the wall for a couple of years. They will have to fight harder for more licensees now, but they are also a target for takeover (Samsung may decide it now needs its own in-house GPU).
I considered that scenario, as well as the one where they don't have their own product for several years. PA Semi was about 3–4 years, but that was an acquisition, not a dissolution of a partnership.
Are there any legal reasons why they would want to give a notice and then wait? I can't think of any.
I dunno. There's a somewhat similar case where Mitsubishi Motors shares plunged due to their fuel economy scandal: http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/20/news/companies/mitsubishi-motors-fuel-tests/.
Nissan and MMC had a joint venture on kei cars (these are Japanese only) which are built at a MMC plant. I've seen videos of it. From the article (and other sources I've seen say something similar): "The company said the problems came to light after Nissan spotted inconsistencies in the some of cars' fuel consumption data while working on the development of a new generation of minicars."
Seems like that made MMC cheaper and Nissan ended up buying a controlling stake: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mitsubishimotors-nissan-idUSKCN12K0DX.
This is something that Imagination could have delivered easily with their architecture. I suspect Apple just want to scale it even higher.
However I suspect Apple get their AMD GPUs for a very competitive price already.
This is fascinating news, although understandably upsetting for Imagination Technologies as a company.
It'll be really interesting to see what Apple has up their sleeves graphics wise. To dump Imagination they must (better) have something pretty amazing in the pipeline.
The one danger I could see for Apple here is that, as everyone knows, Imagination has made the best graphics chips in the mobile space for as long as anyone can remember now, and up until this point Apple has had almost exclusive access to their latest designs (barring some exceptions like the Playstation Vita). This virtual monopoly has given the iPhone/iPad a huge edge over the competition. But now that Imagination knows they're going to be dumped, I imagine they'll be looking to diversify.
While Apple's eventual chip may have a performance edge, if Imagination chips start showing up more in Android phones and tablets, this could seriously erode Apple's lead in GPU performance, and create a situation where Apple's performance is better, but no longer to such an extreme degree.
I also wonder what this means for Apple's overall longterm business (including the Mac). Apple's put a lot of money into developing their own in house CPU and now GPU tech, but they have to know that the smart phone market, particularly, the high end of the market, is nearing saturation in many parts of the world. Where does Apple see the kind of growth potential that warrants all of this investment...
It'll be really interesting to see what Apple has up their sleeves graphics wise. To dump Imagination they must (better) have something pretty amazing in the pipeline.
The one danger I could see for Apple here is that, as everyone knows, Imagination has made the best graphics chips in the mobile space for as long as anyone can remember now, and up until this point Apple has had almost exclusive access to their latest designs (barring some exceptions like the Playstation Vita). This virtual monopoly has given the iPhone/iPad a huge edge over the competition. But now that Imagination knows they're going to be dumped, I imagine they'll be looking to diversify.
While Apple's eventual chip may have a performance edge, if Imagination chips start showing up more in Android phones and tablets, this could seriously erode Apple's lead in GPU performance, and create a situation where Apple's performance is better, but no longer to such an extreme degree.
I also wonder what this means for Apple's overall longterm business (including the Mac). Apple's put a lot of money into developing their own in house CPU and now GPU tech, but they have to know that the smart phone market, particularly, the high end of the market, is nearing saturation in many parts of the world. Where does Apple see the kind of growth potential that warrants all of this investment...
Imagination IP is also in Apple A9, A10 chips, which are in iPhone SE, 6S, 7. If Apple will release new iPhones this year, with their own, custom made GPUs, and will refresh iPhones in upcoming years, for example iPhone SE2 with new Apple CPU, than in two years time, iPhone 7S, which was released this year, will take place of iPhone 6S/SE.
That is directly what Apple means by "not using Imagination Technologies IP in two years time".
Absolutely, but those licenses for those devices previously released may stay in effect for a long time. Or, Apple could just buy large number of components, but usually I see the old contracts not having an expiry date or several years done the line since it's older tech whose license was already paid for in full, save for any per unit fees Apple would still owe.
Last edited:
Fast forward to 2019 when this company is suing Apple for IP infringement and the comments on this forum complain about the "patent troll"
While there's always someone, somewhere willing to complain about something, since ImgTech is a company that actively designs and licenses, (and fabs?) their own GPUs I can't see that happening.
It is not that stupid idea. You have to bare in mind that current state of Imagination Technologies top of the line model of the GPU would be extremely capable of competing with PS4 GPU.
P.S. Here is David Kanter's take on Apple custom GPU: http://www.realworldtech.com/apple-custom-gpu/
Exactly. Spin news to drop share prices, buy most of the stocks from the market, and then squeeze out unfriendly members of the board.
Textbook.
And why on Earth would/should Apple reveal what they're working on? They'll find out, just like the rest of the world. And if it violates a patent, they can sue. In fact, they may well sue anyway.
Last edited:
I’m not surprised that Apple are designing their own GPUs, but this does seems a slightly underhand way of doing business. I can understand poaching the odd employee to help you go it alone, but MacRumors reported 6 months ago that 25 ex-Imagination employees were working for Apple even back then.
Apple are usually more careful about not appearing to be such a ruthless corporate. They probably have their reasons for taking this approach, but it certainly doesn’t look good.
Apple are usually more careful about not appearing to be such a ruthless corporate. They probably have their reasons for taking this approach, but it certainly doesn’t look good.
It's all down to profits. Not a big secret. Apple wants to keep the billions themselves.
One example that Apple will ditch Intel one day too: to pay Intel $250 USD for a CPU, or to have the IP to make x86 chip yourself for $30 USD. I think you can do the math. Apple needs its big cut and same time it needs to be competitive. The less there are mouth to feed, the better for them.