Intel invests $1.5 billion in Chinese mobile chipmakers

Seeking to spur itself in the fast-moving mobile phone sector, Intel is sinking $1.5 billion in a Chinese semiconductor business.

The investment in the business, Tsinghua Unigroup, a subsidiary of the state-owned Tsinghua Holdings Company, also involves agreements to create Intel-based chips with features like modems and wireless capability.

The goal is to create a so-called system on a chip, which can work inside inexpensive but technically advanced phones aimed at users in emerging markets.

Intel will receive about 20 per cent of Spreadtrum Communications, a company controlled by Tshinghua Unigroup that currently makes these types of systems.

Initially, Spreadtrum will use Intel designs, but the two companies may eventually cooperate on devising new kinds of systems on a chip, both for China and for other developing markets.

Intel is looking at developing new products faster than it has in the past and wants to produce these cheap systems on a chip “at the range of several hundred million” units, Mr Lemos said. Given the number of regulatory approvals required, he said, products probably would not ship until the second half of 2015.

NYT