Qualcomm Tried to Buy Intel Without Consequences, This Week Launched ‘Acquisition Strategy’ as Intel Struggles

Qualcomm reportedly made a takeover offer for Intel this week, The Wall Street Journal reports, just weeks after rumors surfaced that Qualcomm was considering buying “part” of Intel’s chip design business.

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In a new report, Qualcomm has turned to Intel and taken control of a sinking ship, as Intel has been declining in basically every department for years. It has lost significant market share in desktop CPUs to AMD, the same in server/HPC markets, it has lost the GPU battle, the laptop battle is now going to AMD, it is laying off over 15,000 employees, its semiconductor division is in serious trouble (and it lost out to AMD on Sony’s next-gen PlayStation 6 deal).

At this point it’s more of a question of “what is Intel doing?” Normal?” and it is in this area that Qualcomm seems most interested, but as Reuters points out, even if Qualcomm did acquire Intel, it would still raise red flags around the world, particularly under antitrust scrutiny.

The Wall Street Journal reports that in order to sign and close the deal, Qualcomm could sell Intel assets or parts to other buyers. The newspaper reports that the deal itself is “far from certain” and that while there are antitrust concerns, it’s possible that in the midst of this mess, there could be an opportunity to bolster chip design in the U.S. with a more successful Intel business.

Qualcomm is the market leader with 4G, 5G modems and Snapdragon chips in hundreds of millions of smartphones a year… but having Intel’s best parts? That would shake things up a lot.