Imagination Technologies says cost & job cuts linked to slower iPhone sales
Imagination Technologies, the British firm responsible for the graphics technology in Apple's iOS devices, on Thursday announced job cuts among other cost-cutting measures, hoping to stem a downturn it linked partly to slowing iPhone shipments.
The company will be posting an operating loss for the year to the end of April, Reuters reported. It's aiming to reduce its cost base by an additional 12.5 million pounds ($18 million) per year by 2017, on top of the 15 million pounds announced last month -- to do this, the company will lay off 200 workers and sell or close some businesses.
During initial restructuring the company will be dismissing 150 people, and closing its Pure digital radio business by the end of 2016.
Apple is a major client for Imagination's PowerVR graphics technology, to the point that Imagination has been trying to reduce its dependence on Apple business for several years. Versions of PowerVR designs have appeared in everything from the iPhone and iPad to the Apple Watch.
Suppliers reported a significant drop in iPhone orders in December, and while shipments are expected to rebound, Apple recently guided to its first year-over-year decline in iPhone sales.
The company will be posting an operating loss for the year to the end of April, Reuters reported. It's aiming to reduce its cost base by an additional 12.5 million pounds ($18 million) per year by 2017, on top of the 15 million pounds announced last month -- to do this, the company will lay off 200 workers and sell or close some businesses.
During initial restructuring the company will be dismissing 150 people, and closing its Pure digital radio business by the end of 2016.
Apple is a major client for Imagination's PowerVR graphics technology, to the point that Imagination has been trying to reduce its dependence on Apple business for several years. Versions of PowerVR designs have appeared in everything from the iPhone and iPad to the Apple Watch.
Suppliers reported a significant drop in iPhone orders in December, and while shipments are expected to rebound, Apple recently guided to its first year-over-year decline in iPhone sales.
Comments
Citation needed. There's nothing of this in Imagination Technologies' press release, which does however say that In the current financial year, both royalty and licensing revenues continue to be in line with the Board’s expectations. While this might just mean that they had expected income from Apple to decrease due to falling iPhone shipments, so it's no surprise if they have, it's just as likely to mean that they did not express a decrease, and that there has been no decrease.
The thing is that there is no standard architecture nor ISA for GPU, as there is for CPU with ARMv8. So it might well be that they have come up with their own proprietary GPU ISA and design, and thus do not need Imagination anymore...
Imagination Technologies said nothing of the sort ! Here is a link to the company release.
https://imgtec.com/news/press-release/17-march-2016-restructuring-update/
THEY DID NOT MENTION ANY DOWNTURN AT APPLE.
This is a lazy reporting of lazy reporting from Yahoo's crappy newsfeed on the iPhone Stocks app.
I wish IMG could just open up the design, OpenRSIC is basically MIPS.
I suspected as much.