Qualcomm Inc. agreed to pay about $65 million today for certain assets from chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc., including intellectual property and the right to hire key technology personnel to enhance its mobile multimedia play.
The move appeared designed to gain ownership over key IP related to graphics cores that Qualcomm had been paying licensing fees for “several years,” according to Steve Mollenkopf, executive VP of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies group.
The sale of its handheld assets to Qualcomm will allow AMD to focus on core competencies in computing and high-end graphics, according to Robert Rivet, CFO at AMD. AMD has been restructuring its business – selling silicon to computer makers – in the past few months, after nearly two years of quarterly losses. In October, it turned its chip manufacturing business into an independent entity financed by investors in Abu Dhabi.
AMD’s stock value has languished since its purchase of ATI Technologies, a chip maker, in 2006 for $5.4 billion.
Qualcomm said the transaction would be about 2 cents per share dilutive to earnings in fiscal 2009 and accretive to earnings by the back half of 2010.
Qualcomm reports earnings on Jan. 28.
Qualcomm bolsters holdings with $65M purchase of AMD assets: Chip maker buys mobile graphics technologies and other resources
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