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posted by n1 on Friday June 23 2017, @10:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the remember-imagination dept.

Imagination Technologies, a company known for its PowerVR GPUs and MIPS processors, saw its shares drop massively when it announced that Apple would make its own GPUs for the next iPhone. Now it is up for sale:

Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE: IMG, "Imagination", "the Group") announces that over the last few weeks it has received interest from a number of parties for a potential acquisition of the whole Group. The Board of Imagination has therefore decided to initiate a formal sale process for the Group and is engaged in preliminary discussions with potential bidders.

The sale process for the MIPS and Ensigma operations, which commenced on 4 May 2017, is progressing well and indicative proposals have been received for both businesses. [...] There can be no certainty that any offer will be made for Imagination, nor that any transaction will be executed, nor as to terms of any such offer or transaction.

Also at PCMag, AppleInsider (Imagination is an AppleOutsider), and Reuters.


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 23 2017, @05:22PM (3 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday June 23 2017, @05:22PM (#530094) Journal

    Come to think of it, that would be the funniest shit ever. Would it be illegal?

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  • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday June 23 2017, @07:09PM (2 children)

    by RamiK (1813) on Friday June 23 2017, @07:09PM (#530184)

    Would it be illegal?

    Yes. [wikipedia.org] But it's so widespread and trivial to get away with (especially when you're only interested in the patents so you don't mind liquidating the company later) that it's rarely enforced.

    e.g. Nokia-Microsoft...

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    • (Score: 2) by Wootery on Saturday June 24 2017, @12:13PM (1 child)

      by Wootery (2341) on Saturday June 24 2017, @12:13PM (#530535)

      Isn't there a question of intent there? Unless Apple dumped IMG for the purpose of crashing their share prices (which they may or may not have done), they wouldn't be guilty of market manipulation, right?

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Saturday June 24 2017, @09:27PM

        by RamiK (1813) on Saturday June 24 2017, @09:27PM (#530696)

        Proving intent depends on the jurisdiction. See p.17: https://www.iosco.org/library/pubdocs/pdf/IOSCOPD103.pdf [iosco.org]

        The bigger problem is long term plays in tech: Strong companies can organize a few shareholders & friends to takeover a smaller company after issuing this sort of press release; Install a CEO that runs the business to the ground while licensing patents free (typically using a cross patenting deal for non-existing products); And then bide their time for a few years until finally buying them and picking them apart (for patents) if necessary.

        Those are easy to spot since those "failed" CEOs end-up miraculously getting hired by those companies. But taking that to court is next to impossible unless you have correspondence showing it was all planned in advance to submit as evidence.
        That's, in a nutshell, the story of Nokia-MS.

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