Broadcom Explores Buying Qualcomm (bloomberg.com) 69
phalse phace writes: Bloomberg news is reporting that Broadcom may be planning to make an offer to buy Qualcomm. From the report: "Broadcom Ltd. is considering a bid of more than $100 billion for Qualcomm Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be the biggest-ever takeover of a chipmaker. Broadcom is speaking to advisers about the potential deal, said the people, who asked not to be identified because talks are private. The offer of about $70 a share would include cash and stock and is likely to be made in the coming days, the people said." If the deal goes through, Broadcom would become "the world's third largest chipmaker behind Intel Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. and give it a huge swath of the supply chain of vital phone components such as Wi-Fi and cellular modem chips. The two companies are already among the top ten providers of chips ranked by revenue in an industry that's consolidating rapidly."
Broadcom also moving their HQ from Singapore to US (Score:2)
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Which makes it obvious that moving their mailing address was done just to make it easier for US regulators to approve this acquisition.
And don't forget the pending litigation with Apple [slashdot.org]. Might play better for them as an "American" company.
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Except it’s Qualcomm that filed suit against not Broadcom.
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Except it’s Qualcomm that filed suit against not Broadcom.
You know this story is about Broadcom buying Qualcomm, so they'll be the same company, right?
NOOOOOOO (Score:5, Insightful)
Broadcom sucks at releasing firmware and hardware programming specs for their wireless gear.
Broadcom wants to buy Qualcomm
Qualcomm bought Atheros, who was traditionally much much better at releasing firmware and programming specs.
This is going to suck.
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Avago bought broadcom and took the new name. Avago is basically a holding company with each acquired business operating independently. They are also extremely profit driven so that might affect your concerns.
If you work for qualcomm you should be concerned.
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I've used 3ware -> LSI -> Avago -> Broadcom raid cards for 20 years.
Support during the 3ware and LSI days was great. Never had an issue, even with 'unsupported' drives and support -- as long as I showed the technical skill to work with LSI on issues.
Avago was fine right after the buyout, but these days technical support people at Broadcom are just not skilled. With LSI, you'd call/email.. and someone that seemed to actually understand raid, and how their products worked, would assist you.
Not now.
Rebranding (Score:3)
It would make me very happy if the merged company rebranded to become Comcomm.
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They could call it Comcomm (Score:2)
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When there is only one semiconductor manufacturer left what will it be called?
It will not matter because they will only be making products for the single combat aircraft that the US military can buy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Incomprehensible (Score:4, Insightful)
I used to work for Qualcomm (Score:5, Insightful)
I started talking to Ken about Qcom, he didn't want to talk about it. He was perfectly willing to talk about Qcom 20 years ago, but not life there now. Keep in mind this guy had been there for some 30 years, he was worth a few million, and was still working. He pretty much said that when Paul took over the culture changed overnight. The annual Christmas party, that used to be several shades past awesome? Cancelled. The summer picnics I took my 1 digit old grandkids to? cancelled. The dinners that came in at 7 PM when you were waiting for a chip to clear customs? Cancelled.
I ended up selling all my stock and cashing in my options around 7-8 years ago cuz I needed the money, but damn, that stock hasn't gone anywhere since then. Think I sold at 50 something, stock is now 62 something.
Comparing Broadcom to Qualcomm (Score:1)
I worked at both
I've invested in both companies
A confession - I have a builtin bias. I know Hock Tan, Broadcom's boss, for decades (before he went into Broadcom)
Overall impression:
Dishonesty runs in the veins of Qualcomm while paranoia runs in the veins of Broadcom
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Embedded Automotive Rollercoaster. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sigh.
We have chips, in use [wikipedia.org], that were of Motorola design when they were in cahoots with IBM and Apple [wikipedia.org]. Then Freescale. Then NXP. Now Qualcomm. They just now updated their default install location from C:\Freescale to C:\NXP.
Maybe moving to Renesas [renesas.com] won't be too terrible... then again they were NEC.
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More precisely Renesas results from the merge of Hitatchi and Mitsubishi, and afterwards NEC. They sells MCUs from the 3 (think SH for exemple).
It's a good company to work in, people are very dedicated. For exemple, they contribute a lot to the kernel, see https://www.linuxfoundation.or... [linuxfoundation.org].
Funnily, Renesas acquired Nokia Mobile R&D. The objective was to become a major contender to Qualcomm. Then after failure they sold this business to ... Broadcom.
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More precisely Renesas results from the merge of Hitatchi and Mitsubishi, and afterwards NEC. They sells MCUs from the 3 (think SH for exemple).
Is anyone still actually buying those? I didn't think they'd been keeping them current.
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Drinkypoo San, may be you are right, SH are not bought. However they are still sold ;-) see https://www.renesas.com/en-us/... [renesas.com]
Wait, what? (Score:2)
Errm, Qualcomm is double the size of Broadcom (both in terms of revenue and number of employees). How the heck is a $13 billion revenue company (Broadcom) with only $4 billion in cash reserves going to buy a company for $100 billion?
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Lots of debt... don't forget that Broadcom was actually bigger than Avago when Avago made that purchase.
Even with a lot of debt, though, Broadcom (Avago) is actually really good at repayment following acquisitions: they basically slice up what they acquire in order to pick off the business units they really want, and sell off the rest. That means that they recoup a lot of the expense of an acquisition pretty much immediately. Obviously it's not great if you happen to work for one of those less desirable bus