Broadcom has sent a letter to Congress:
Broadcom Limited said, in a letter to Members of Congress regarding its offer to acquire Qualcomm Inc., that it is committed to making the United States the global leader in 5G by focusing resources and strengthening leadership in this area. Any notion that a combined Broadcom-Qualcomm would slash funding or cede leadership in 5G is completely unfounded. In addition, Broadcom will not sell any critical national security assets to any foreign companies. Of course, any dispositions of assets to foreign buyers would be themselves subject to CFIUS review.
Broadcom is also pledging to create a new $1.5 billion fund with a focus on innovation to train and educate the next generation of RF engineers in the United States. This will ensure America's continued leadership in future wireless technology.
Broadcom also said it will work closely with the United States government as it drives to achieve and sustain this global leadership in 5G and beyond.
Broadcom also smeared Qualcomm's "anticompetitive licensing practices", and created an infographic "to set the record straight about Qualcomm's business relationships in China".
See also: The incredible multi-dimensional chess of Qualcomm vs. Broadcom
Previously: Broadcom's Hostile Takeover Attempt of Qualcomm Delayed by U.S. Government Panel
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @05:04PM (7 children)
To add to this. This little rumor popped up. https://www.investors.com/news/intel-could-hijack-qualcomm-takeover-by-buying-broadcom-wsj/ [investors.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @05:26PM (2 children)
This would put Qualcomm under both NSA and GCHQ authorization for spying, making it easy for them to backdoor a majority of cellphones worldwide. If you thought all those holes in 4G LTE wasn't bad enough, imagine when they can play he said she said over who put the backdoors in the cryptographically locked down baseband firmware that just happens to control bootstrapping of the memory ranges for the ARM cpu cores, in addition to directly controlling the camera, bluetooth, microphone and speaker.
A merger between broadcom and qualcomm should concern everyone, a three way merger between them and intel... well just when you thought chipzilla was too big, he can now destroy all of japan in a single swipe of his tail.... or is that America? Maybe China, given how many of their phones use qualcomm chips...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Sunday March 11 2018, @05:40PM (1 child)
I wonder if China is working on building a viable competitor to Qualcomm.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Sunday March 11 2018, @06:01PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiSilicon [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday March 11 2018, @06:00PM (3 children)
I doubt blowing $100 billion or more on Broadcom is going to help Intel in the long run. It doesn't even muscle them into the high-end ARM SoC market.
http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2018/03/qualcomm_broadcom_intel_sounds.html [oregonlive.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday March 11 2018, @07:17PM (1 child)
Exactly.
Broadcom is fabless from what I hear.
So Intel would get nothing but patents and designs, which aren't that hard to come by.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @09:34PM
So is Qualcomm.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 11 2018, @09:31PM
It is "if bcom buys qcom'. That would put Intel squarely in the middle of the cell market and WiFI market. I think you wildly underestimate exactly how big qualcomm and broadcom are. Between those two you have most of the cell market. Intel has tried to crack that nut for years and Apple is their first real big break into that market in years. Pretty much every high end SoC cell chip has a good chunk of their tech in them if not their chips. The only real exception to that is Apple with the other 40% of the market. Intel is shipping ~100M chips a year. Qualcomm by itself ships at least ~200M a year.
I personally own both Intel and Qualcomm. They are both very good chip companies. But QCOM is the one with the better setup for the future. BCOM is looking to gut them and ride the licensing model. My opinion is to look for them to spin off QCT quickly once they buy them. Which is high touch. The patents is low touch. I could see Intel wanting to get that existing chip business. As it more closely matches their existing business and they can bring the fabs in house. Look for TMSC and Samsung to take a hit if that happens.