Intel selling mobile chip unit to Marvell
By Paul Miller 
posted Jun 27th 2006 11:57AM
posted Jun 27th 2006 11:57AM
The rumors of Intel searching for a buyer were circulating, and it looks like they were true: Intel is selling off their mobile chip arm -- responsible for the quite successful XScale group of processors -- to Marvell Technology Group for $600 million. With chips making notable appearances in Treo, Blackberry and HTC devices, and pulling in a reported $250 million in revenue last year, we're still scratching our heads as to why exactly Intel would want to get rid of such a successful portion of their business. We'd think powering smartphones would be a priority for Intel right now, but the word is that Intel will have an option to receive $100 million of the purchase price in Marvell stock, so they might not be out of the game entirely. The chip unit currently employs 1,400 people, and Marvell plans to retain the "vast majority" of them, so this move shouldn't be too traumatic for most parties involved. We just hope they keep up with the R&D to get us smaller, faster, cooler and cheaper chips on the regular.
Intel wants to move the mobile market away from ARM / XScale and onto x86 - the UMPC is the first indication of this, and we'll see how well they do in a performance vs consumption standpoint...
XScale is successful but the whole business is struggling and is losing a lot of money, that is why Intel wants to sell it.