Mergers and acquisitions are developing strange bedfellows. It may be that Steve Jobs is being listened to from the dead. When Jeff Bezos wants to buy the high-end Texas Instruments (TI) chipsets, it says a lot about where we stand in the semiconductor market. If it’s true that TI is next in line Apple’s business, it is a great move.
In the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Issacson, the discussion about knowing how to write great software requires great hardware design seems not to be lost on any of the competitors.The patent wars aside, the acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google will be delivering new products at the end of the year. Samsung is the clear leader in building for Android, but it’s not clear that they want to be exclusive, although Microsoft’s alliance with Nokia makes it hard to figure out a different play.
Couple this with the looming problem of incompatible spectrum and we can see alliances needing to be formed from silicon to air. For the air side of semiconductors, we probably will see cognitive radios coming of age in the next two years.
To be clear, the semiconductor industry has always had peaks and valleys, and even with Apple acquiring a fingerprint chip company and Amazon looking to buy TI’s mobile ARM, we are not at all-time highs. In fact, we can see that semiconductors are in the mid range.
And it may be that Apple and Amazon will fight the integrated side while Google and Microsoft represent the “open” side.
We may have a lot more supply chain consolidation for the cellphone of the future.
One thing lost on a good buy side analyst friend is the way Microsoft is reinventing itself. The complaints about Windows 8 as a desktop solution misses the point that Microsoft recognizes that the world is mobile and not going to be on PCs. PC sales are flat and Windows is looking for a new breed of mobile devices to be its champion.
That is more that is on the Surface. Or should I say, it’s going to be a lot of ARM wrestling.
Edited by
Stefanie Mosca 
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