When Broadcom tangled up with Qualcomm's acquisitions, it suddenly announced that Intel was interested in acquiring Broadcom and swallowing Qualcomm. Some people thought that the difficulty was relatively large. I think this possibility still exists. For Intel, this can bring multiple challenges. Good.
Intel faces internal and external problems
Intel has retained the world's largest semiconductor company for more than 20 years, relying on its monopolistic advantages in the server and PC markets. It has a market share of 97% in the server chip market and more than 80% market share in the PC market. Both of these businesses face challenges.
In the server chip market, its status is still very solid at present. It is the AMD and ARM camps that have brought challenges to it. AMD has also developed X86 architecture server chips and ARM architecture chips. Its latest Zen architecture has performed well, which makes it look Hope for the server chip market, the development of ARM architecture chips is for the future layout; ARM camp in addition to AMD Qualcomm, Huawei Hass, etc., which Qualcomm has achieved some results in the server chip market, Microsoft has adopted Qualcomm's ARM architecture chip , According to rumors that Google also intends to use Qualcomm's ARM architecture chips.
In the PC market, Intel is already in a defensive posture. AMD's Ryzen processor gains users' approval. Rarely gains market share in the PC market. The ARM camp's chromebook and Intel's long-time ally, Microsoft chose to cooperate with Qualcomm to launch the adoption of the latter. ARM architecture chip with Windows10 system, the industry generally believe that Apple is integrating iOS system and Mac OS system. Its current use of Intel processor Mac is likely to also abandon the Intel processor.
The incursions of competitors into the server chip market have hit Intel hardest. Now Intel has reorganized the PC business and focused on the server chip business. We hope to rely on its advantages in the server chip market to develop artificial intelligence, automatic driving, and the Internet of Things. Emerging businesses such as these. In these emerging areas, in addition to the above-mentioned opponents, Intel is also facing competitors such as NVIDIA and Google, these two companies have obtained competitive advantages in the field of artificial intelligence.
Intel's acquisition of 'Double-pass' welcomes multiple positives
From the above, it can be seen that Qualcomm is an important threat to Intel in both the PC and server chip markets. If it is bought, then the threat will be reduced. Intel has also made up for its regret in the mobile chip market. It has a server chip, PC The three major business of chip and mobile chip, these three services have strong complementary advantages. It should be noted that Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom also have WiFi chip business, after the merger will allow them to further enhance the leading position in the WiFi chip market .
The complementary function of the mobile chip business to Intel is very large. The current mobile chip market has far surpassed the PC market, and the annual shipments are several times that of the PC processor. In the future, the emerging areas such as the Internet of Things and autopilot are even more Great promise. Intel has already recognized the importance of the mobile chip business for it, but its lower power consumption Atom processor is too weak to compete with the ARM architecture processor is discontinued. It seems that it has no alternative in the mobile chip market. Acquiring Qualcomm can make up for its regret.
After resolving these threats, Intel can focus on the challenges that NVIDIA, Google and others face in the field of artificial intelligence. In the field of artificial intelligence, Intel's biggest weakness is its lack of GPUs. Qualcomm has exactly the most powerful mobile market in the moment. GPU chip - Adreno, the chip technology is precisely from the current GPU market, one of the two AMD acquired ATI, although the current Adreno NVIDIA and AMD's GPU in the performance gap is still a big gap, but with this foundation, there is always hope for Intel To catch up, Intel’s independent R&D GPU has been difficult to achieve in the past few years and was recently forced to acquire AMD’s GPU license.
In the past few years, Intel has made a number of large acquisitions, indicating that it has the intention to invest heavily in its strategic goals. If it confirms that the acquisition can achieve its strategic objectives, I believe it will not hesitate to acquire it. Double pass' obviously brings many benefits to it, so this possibility still exists.