Intel knows that smartphones are quickly replacing PCs as the world’s most important and coveted consumer electronics devices. For years the company has been looking for a way to impose its will and brand on this fast-growing industry.
As Enterprise Mobile Today discovered, Intel’s wait may soon be over. According to a German newspaper, the chipmaker is about to close a $1 billion purchase of Infineon Technologies’ wireless chip unit, a deal that, if it were to materialize, would pit against Qualcomm for supremacy in the mobile device chip sector.
An Intel spokesperson declined to comment what the company called rumor and speculation.
However, mobile chip analyst Will Strauss believes the deal will happen. “Don’t forget, Intel under new management really wants to get back into the cellular business because it’s the only market that approaches the size of the PC business. There is no bigger market and they really do want to get into it,” Strauss, principal analyst with Forward Concepts, told InternetNews.com.
Intel is reportedly in the final stages of working out a deal to purchase the wireless chip business from Infineon Technologies in a deal that would top $1 billion and put Intel in the mobile communications market in a big way.
The report first appeared in the German daily newspaper Die Welt (available here in German), not exactly a typical source for technology news and rumors.
But Infineon is a spin-off of the German industrial electronics giant Siemens AG, so the source is likely in Germany. The article said negotiations are taking place in Munich, and that investment bank J.P. Morgan is handling the deal.
