Intel/Qualcomm: The Last Big Move

Rick Merritt, SiliconValley Bureau Chief
5/29/2015 12:12 PM EDT

In the chip game, two big dominoes are waiting to fall.

The glorious, storied semiconductor industry has many more moves to play. But for the foreseeable future yesterday’s news about the new Broadcom reminds us that everyone is playing one big game of consolidation.

In that game there is one last really big move. A combination of Intel and Qualcomm could be the last of the big time mergers in semiconductors. There will no doubt be lots more combinations, but none as large or significant.

The Intel/Qualcomm merger makes sense for a number of reasons. Intel owns computing from the data center down to the notebook but has been unable to establish a position in smartphones. Qualcomm owns the smartphone space but has no real prospects in today’s other huge growth market, cloud computing.

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