View this article at: http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/12/23/intel.stake.in.imagination/
Tuesday, Dec 23, 2008 7:45am
Intel ups stake in iPhone GPU maker
Intel has countered Apple's investment in Imagination Technologies with an increased stake of its own. The semiconductor maker says it has bought just over 6.9 million shares in Britain-based Imagination to gain a 3.04 percent stake in the company and warns in a required statement that it may respond to any bid to acquire the company with a counter offer of its own, though it adds that there is no immediate intention to launch a takeover itself.

It's unclear whether the move is intentionally meant to deter Apple from mulling a buyout bid, though both firms notably have an increasing dependence on Imagination's PowerVR graphics technology for their mobile platforms.

Apple currently uses a PowerVR MBX Lite graphics chipset for all generations of the iPhone and iPod touch and is known to be moving to the faster, more feature-rich PowerVR SGX in future products. Intel in turn uses the graphics for its recent CE 2110 and 3110 embedded chips and should use it for its Poulsbo-based Atom architecture meant for smartphones, mobile Internet devices and netbooks.