2. Qorvo is expected to win this year, Apple's new orders, analysts are optimistic about its development potential
3. Intel intends to sell a majority stake in the AR division, hoping to introduce industrial investors
4.x86 crazy money! Intel 6 generations of core R & D costs will be 71 billion US dollars
1. Broadcom will raise its bid for QUALCOMM and prepare for 'spin-off' in response to antitrust
Set micro-grid news, according to CNBC sources, due to concerns that Qualcomm can not meet the financial expectations in 2019, Broadcom plans to be the latest release Qualcomm earnings assessment, Broadcom is expected to soon increase the acquisition offer.
Qualcomm reported on January 31, 2018 financial year first quarter earnings report, although revenue and profit than expected, but operating profit fell 96%, barely maintain a breakeven. Mainly because of its largest customer Apple and partners Due to the lawsuit issues continue to refuse to pay royalties, coupled with Qualcomm antitrust fines throughout the country due Qualcomm shares in the United States on the 1st, the closing price fell 2.2%.
Broadcom first round of the offer is given at 70 US dollars per share, the result was rejected Qualcomm short-term returns to reduce its return to fiscal 2019 set its goal in fiscal year, so that earnings per share reached 7.50 US dollars, Broadcom, Qualcomm can not be formed Goal, it will take these factors into account, provide support for their quotations.
Although Qualcomm set a target of $ 7.50 per share EPS by 2019, industry sources pointed out that Qualcomm only to avoid being acquired by Broadcom, but Broadcom believes that Qualcomm will not be able to achieve this financial goal.Therefore, Broadcom will these factors Consider it in order to support the offer made in the second round.
In addition, the sources disclosed that Broadcom is considering giving a possible 'break up fee' that may have been the largest in history and resolving antitrust concerns, and that Broadcom may also add the 'Material Adverse Effect' clause In the event of an adverse takeover of the acquisition by the acquirer, the acquirer may use the clause to terminate the transaction.
However, Qualcomm still faces many challenges in its successful acquisition of Qualcomm, and Qualcomm also released a video recently, led by Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf and executive chairman Paul Jacobs Senior management team in person, strongly opposed to Broadcom's hostile takeover and vowed to continue to boycott Qualcomm questioned the Broadcom project to create value for shareholders, unrealistically drawn pie from the height of the two companies as the business Coverage, even if the last two companies merge, will also be subjected to extensive, long-term regulatory review on a global scale and may or may not be approved.
In addition, Qualcomm is planning a major stock buy-back as another way to boost its market capitalization, which Qualcomm calls the latest move by Broadcom a "low-value, risky, malicious offer that is meaningless to shareholders," and said Broadcom Opportunism has significantly under-estimated Qualcomm, conflicting board members with limited expertise, which puts Qualcomm at significant risk.
The attitude of the Chinese market is also particularly crucial for the acquisition.Except for most of China's handset manufacturers, worried that once Broadcom and Qualcomm, will raise chip prices, so that the cost rise and expressed opposition, Qualcomm acquired NXP transactions The case is also waiting for the clap of the Ministry of Commerce of China, which has obtained the consent of the regulatory authorities in the eight countries and only China's last vote.If Qualcomm smoothly merges NXP, NXP and Broadcom will overlap in wireless network business, Make Broadcom purchase and Qualcomm face more stringent examination, it is unlikely that Broadcom acquisition of Qualcomm will be greatly reduced. (Proofreading / Xiaoqiu)
2. Qorvo is expected to win this year, Apple's new orders, analysts are optimistic about its development potential
Shares of Qorvo, a maker of radio frequency ICs, fell after the earnings announcement on Thursday (January 31), but then rebounded and rose 10% after the close. According to analysts at Drexel Hamilton, Qorvo shares Due to the company's mid / high-band PAD and Phase 6 designs being adopted and mid / high-band PAD samples being sent to new smartphone makers. In addition, Qorvo executives revealed that it is expected to win the Apple product later this year Since the largest wireless components product orders.
According to Qorvo's latest earnings report, Qorvo reported Q4 revenue of $ 845.7 million for the third quarter of fiscal year (October-December), an increase of 2% sequentially and earnings per share of $ 1.69, better than market expectations. (January-March 2018) with revenue of between 6.45% and 665 million U.S. dollars and earnings per share of 1.05 U.S. dollars, lower than market expectations.
According to foreign media reports, Drexel Hamilton's Cody Acree report pointed out that Qorvo estimated revenue this season lower than market expectations, mainly due to the sluggish smartphone market.In addition, Apple as Qorvo's largest customer, the new iPhone X sales Poor performance led to a short-term decline in Qorvo's share price, with about 40% of Qorvo revenue coming from Apple.
It is noteworthy that Acree expects Qorvo to get out of this trend, emphasizing that the company has adopted designs for mid / high-band PAD and Phase 6 and that mid / high-band PAD has been sent to new smartphone manufacturers. , Qorvo executives said later this year is expected to Apple products in the history of the largest adoption of the design, more than the previous wireless components.
Srini Pajjuri of Macquarie is also very optimistic about Qorvo.He said that 2018 is waiting for the transition period of 5G construction, including 4x4 MIMO (multiple input / output), next-generation wireless network standard 802.11ax and other technical support, radio frequency IC Manufacturers still have enough business opportunities, so Pajjuri sees Qorvo as attractive and invites investors to remain confident.
It is understood that Qorvo has accumulated a number of core technologies in 5G related fields, ranging from LowDrift ™ and NoDrift ™ filtering, antenna tuning to RF Fusion ™ and RF Flex ™ RF front-end solutions to more basic GaN technologies, Qorvo offers Industry Leading Core Architecture, Filters and Switching Products. (Proofreading / Fan Rong)
3. Intel intends to sell a majority stake in the AR division, hoping to introduce industrial investors
According to Bloomberg reported that informed sources, Intel intends to sell its majority stake in the AR sector.
The department has been developing smart glasses, which can be paired with mobile phones via Bluetooth.The company plans to provide consumers with smart glasses this year.Currently, Intel is looking for investors for the business, Intel's business valuation of the sector at 350 million US dollars .
Informed sources said the pair of glasses will be able to Beijing information displayed in the wearer's vision, the use of laser projector to project the image onto the user's retina. Taiwan Quanta Computer is producing this product for Intel. Informed sources said that One technology is internally called 'Superlite', but the business name for sale is likely to be 'Vaunt'.
The chip age of the PC era, in the post-PC era has been constantly looking for new power point.However, in investing in future business, Intel always seems to be a beat, the phone chip lost to Qualcomm, AI business and slower than NVIDIA. Last year, Intel again suffered Waterloo in the wearable area, withdrew the relevant departments and then moved to AR. However, for the moment, it seems that this area is also not going well.
As part of this contraction, the company closed its reconstructive eyewear acquisition in 2015. Some members of the Recon team have become part of the business for sale, with about 200 employees in the United States, Switzerland and Israel.
However, Intel still retains some hope for this part of the business.For the introduction of investors, Intel hopes to be an industrial investor, relying on its own powerful sales channels or other industry advantages to promote this part of the business development, rather than Simple financial investors.
The rise of AR products is also seen as a trend in the coming years as Amazon, Google and Apple giant companies are all developing AR hardware, which estimates the market value of VR and AR hardware could be as high as $ 110 billion by 2025, while software Revenue is 72 billion US dollars.Therefore, this is not a small market for the underlying chip providers, it is still quite attractive (Source: 36 Krypton)
4.x86 crazy money! Intel 6 generations of core R & D costs will be 71 billion US dollars
Last year, AMD launched the Ryzen Rui Long processor, after years from finally returned to the high-performance processor market, the performance of the previous generation FX processor has improved significantly, coupled with good price / performance, that AMD will be able to turn around in 2017 Surplus.
Intel has been ridiculed here for many years to squeeze toothpaste upgrade, especially in recent years, process technology has been stuck in the 14nm node, Skylake architecture after almost no escalation, 6th and 7th generation and now 8 generations are true.
However, ridicule go ridicule, to know that high-performance processor R & D is a burn alive, 6 generations of Corela Skylake, 7 generations of Kabylake processor addition to processor development costs more than 71, 70 billion US dollars, this tube toothpaste is not cheap.
We all know that China is vigorously promoting the development of the semiconductor industry. Companies such as Huawei and Spreadtrum have made advances in mobile processors such as ARM. However, the gap between us and foreign countries is still high-performance processors. The X86 is not licensed as an ARM The threshold is very high.
China now X86 field In addition to AMD authorized Tianjin Haiguang Investment Company, the rest is the Shanghai Siu-core companies, their technology comes from VIA VIA Inc., which is AMD, Intel's third company with X86 authorized, However, the strength of the VIA two places far worse, craft, architecture are far behind.
The successor to the VIA mantle of Shanghai Katherine core company recently introduced the KX-5000 series processors, they described in detail their difficulties in the development process and achievements, but this is not the focus of this article is interesting that they announced Some processor R & D-related data, such as CPU R & D investment in this area.
At present, they give examples of ARM, AMD, Intel, Apple, IBM and Huawei. For example, the ARM processor cost R & D of $ 349 million in 2016, which is relatively low. However, the ARM model is different from other companies. Mainly to do the design and program, the processor manufacturer to buy the ARM's authorization, or to their own research and development of the second design.
Really want to do their own processor research and development is very burn, and Apple's R & D investment in 2016 about 10 billion US dollars, IBM also has 5.75 billion US dollars, AMD also has 1 billion US dollars, and Intel R & D costs more to reach in 2016 12.7 billion U.S. dollars
In their case, Huawei also spent $ 76.2 billion on R & D in 2016. However, Huawei's R & D investment is not for a processor project, so the total investment is great, but it is not clear about the specific chip R & D expense anyway Very low, after all, this is a burning job.
Katherine also announced the cost of these companies to develop specific processors, ARM A73 architecture research and development cycle of about 1 year, cost 324 million pounds, about 420 million US dollars.
X86 processor burn more, Core architecture 10.6 years ago also to 34.6 billion US dollars, each generation of processors after also have 34 billion US dollars, to 22nm process Haswell processor, the cost rose to 6.6 billion US dollars , 6 generations of Corela Skylake processor to 7.1 billion US dollars, 7 generations of Kaby Lake have 70 billion US dollars - you ridicule Intel toothpaste all day, did not expect this tube toothpaste so expensive.
Because AMD has no semiconductor factory, processor research and development costs are much less, but Zen processor still needs 3.12 billion dollars, less than half of Intel processor, but taking into account the size of AMD's revenue, the cost is not low. IBM's Power processor R & D costs much lower, on average more than a dozen two billion dollars.
However, here to note is that the core also did not announce the source of these data, the actual cost of research and development to be much more complex, such as Intel's annual investment of more than 120 billion R & D investment, a large part of R & D process into technology, from 6 generations of Core to 7 On behalf of Core Duo changes, Intel can not just invested 7 billion US dollars in research and development on the structure.