Apple sets up office near HQ of outgoing graphics tech supplier Imagination Technologies
Apple has reportedly opened an office in St. Albans in the U.K., just a few miles away from the Kings Langley headquarters of its outgoing mobile graphics partner, Imagination Technologies.
The space measures 22,500 square feet, and is dedicated to developing proprietary graphics technology, The Telegraph said. The company is likely hoping to recruit more people away from Imagination, which currently makes about half of its revenues from the iPhone and iPad maker. Apple announced plans to migrate away from Imagination earlier this year, prompting the latter's shares to plummet. In late June, Imagination said it was looking to sell itself.
Apple's has already been recruiting Imagination workers for months, its most prominent get being COO John Metcalfe. Until now, hires were being sent to Apple's main offices in London, or overseas to California.
The company now has over a dozen listings for graphics-related jobs in South Hertfordshire, the region in which St. Albans and Kings Langley are based.
Apple and Imagination have entered into a war of words, with the latter claiming that Apple won't be able to develop new graphics tech without infringing on intellectual property, forcing a "dispute resolution procedure". Apple has meanwhile challenged Imagination's timeline of events, claiming that it stopped accepting new intellectual property from the UK firm in 2015, rather than in 2016 as Imagination said to its shareholders.
Apple has increasingly turned to proprietary chip designs, looking not just to sever its ties with third parties but to build optimized hardware. Custom graphics could deliver both faster rendering and lower power consumption, something particularly important as the company moves into fields like augmented reality.
The space measures 22,500 square feet, and is dedicated to developing proprietary graphics technology, The Telegraph said. The company is likely hoping to recruit more people away from Imagination, which currently makes about half of its revenues from the iPhone and iPad maker. Apple announced plans to migrate away from Imagination earlier this year, prompting the latter's shares to plummet. In late June, Imagination said it was looking to sell itself.
Apple's has already been recruiting Imagination workers for months, its most prominent get being COO John Metcalfe. Until now, hires were being sent to Apple's main offices in London, or overseas to California.
The company now has over a dozen listings for graphics-related jobs in South Hertfordshire, the region in which St. Albans and Kings Langley are based.
Apple and Imagination have entered into a war of words, with the latter claiming that Apple won't be able to develop new graphics tech without infringing on intellectual property, forcing a "dispute resolution procedure". Apple has meanwhile challenged Imagination's timeline of events, claiming that it stopped accepting new intellectual property from the UK firm in 2015, rather than in 2016 as Imagination said to its shareholders.
Apple has increasingly turned to proprietary chip designs, looking not just to sever its ties with third parties but to build optimized hardware. Custom graphics could deliver both faster rendering and lower power consumption, something particularly important as the company moves into fields like augmented reality.
Comments
Apple already owns 10% of Imagination.
In 2009, Imagination Tech became primarily an IP licensing company, according to their own publications. That doomed them. They got lazy.
A company dealing with Apple has to be have two divisions: commodity and skunkworks. Commodity sells standard components to everyone, including Apple. The skunkworks division works in secret pushing the envelope for their special clients.
Remember that PowerVR shipped in Samsung Exynos, Intel Atom, various lessor known SoCs (TI OMAP had PowerVR, but couldn't compete and they cratered) in the 2009 to 2012 time frame. They had a dominant position in the mobile GPU market. What killed them wasn't becoming an IP company nor was it become too dependent on Apple. What killed them was that they couldn't compete against ARMH Mali GPUs and weren't good enough to prevent vertical SoCs from going custom. Exynos went Mali. Snapdragon continued to use Adreno. Intel went with their own GPUs (from Core i-series chips). Nvidia always used their own design obviously. And the Chinese SoCs like MediaTek and HiSilicon are now predominantly ARMH Mali.
There aren't any rules for working with Apple other than the usual rules in contracting with a big company. It's no different in any other industry. Imagination Tech failed all on their own.
so in addition to the patents Apple has, and don’t forget that in addition to the patents Apple has from their own work, they have patents in those large patent groups they, and in a couple of cases, they bought with other firms. They can license whatever patent fillers they need from AMD, Intel, IBM, Nvidia and others. Saying that they will no longer need Imagination’s IP, doesn’t mean that they are also saying that they won’t have IP from others.