Apple invests in Imagination
Nobody saw it coming, despite there being no shortage of Cupertino-watchers, but Apple today bought 8.2 million shares of Imagination Technologies, a leading mobile-on-chip system graphics developer. That is a 3.6 percent stake in the graphics company, worth approximately $4.9 million. The technologies produced by Imagination are already used in the iPhone and offer outstanding graphics and with very low power consumption.
The acquisition in Imagination Technologies appears to confirm an earlier rumor that Apple was indeed the company mentioned in Imagination’s September announcement about having signed multi-year, multi-use licensing agreement for use of Imagination’s current and future POWERVR graphics and video intellectual property cores with a large American firm. This move follows Apple’s decision to acquire the military-grade technology expertise of PA Semi earlier this year. Apple also made an attempt recently to hire an IBM chip wizard to lead its iPod team and in April, an Apple Insider report confirmed the culmination of a deal between Imagination and Samsung. Apple Insider put forward the opinion that the objective may have been to build the ultimate platform for gaming and video playback by combining the technologies offered by the two companies.
Apple’s most recent iPhone (and many other mobile devices) use versions of the PowerVR MBX graphics processor core that was developed by Imagination. The core is included by chip manufacturers under a license agreement with Imagination. Their next-generation graphics core, the SGX series, introduces OpenGL ES 2.0 support, which should make it even more popular. The new product also contains a new Universal Scalable Shader Engine that provides mobile devices with highly efficient, shader-based 3D graphics. This should further increase the efficiency of the Imagination graphics engine.
All of these moves on the part of Apple would seem to confirm a continuing dependence on the iPhone / iPod lines in Apple’s business plan, despite corporate statement that have downplayed them to one degree or another. These technologies could well play a part in the Apple netbook now rumored to be introduced at MacWorld in January, as well as in the next generation of iPhones. All of this bodes well for users of Apple mobile devices.
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