IoT Chip Competition
Softbank announced on July 19 that it would acquire ARM for 23.4 billion pounds. This deal has to do with the fact that ARM is having a hard time expanding its business in industries other than smartphone while mobile market trends are shifting toward the Internet of Things (IoT), smart car, artificial intelligence, etc.
“The IoT and cloud computing solutions are emerging as the most promising parts of the semiconductor industry by guaranteeing more profits than PC and mobile and more than half of Intel’s profits are being derived from its server business these days,” said a semiconductor industry expert, adding, “On the contrary, the mobile semiconductor market is yielding less and less profits in the stage of saturation.”
At present, Intel is shifting the focus of its business to the IoT at a rapid pace in order to overcome its setback in the mobile market. The company is increasing its investment in networking solutions as well as server CPUs and has become capable of device chip design by taking over Altera.
Under the circumstances, another interesting point is what strategy Samsung Electronics will adopt in Intel’s competition with Softbank and ARM with it partnering with both sides at the same time. Samsung Electronics is currently in a partnership with Intel for IoT expansion while manufacturing mobile and IoT chips based on ARM’s architecture.