It is a strategic acquisition that has just signed yesterday Nvidia, specialist of the graphics cards and processors. The American manufacturer announced the purchase of the British company Icera $ 367 million in cash. This company is specialized in cellular modems 2 G and 3 G, or "baseband". These components allow the telephone to communicate, in capturing and decoding the signal. An activity that perfectly complements that of Nvidia. Since end of 2008, the manufacturer develops in effect processors for smartphones and tablets, under the code name of Tegra today. A platform that runs on the ARM architecture, and that successful surfing: it team the phones of LG (Optimus 2 X), Samsung, Sony-Ericsson (Xperia Play). And side bars, it is present in Motorola (the Xoom), LG (Optimus Pad), Samsung (the Galaxy bat 10.1), and a model Toshiba (Folio), Acer and two others in Asus.
With the purchase of Icera, Nvidia may propose a système full nesting both the processor and the modem. Either that already offers Qualcomm, world leader in the chip for smartphones through its Snapdragon platform. Similarly, Intel - through the redemption of the Infineon baseband division - and St-Ericsson offer two solutions. This race l "integration is increasingly essential in this market, both for footprint savings, performance and independence.
The market for smartphones is strategic for Nvidia. The original manufacturer of PC graphics cards, Nvidia has unique expertise on the image, a parameter more in more critical on smartphones given their multimedia content. And it was the first to demonstrate, in February last in Barcelona, a processor for smartphone incorporating four hearts, called Tegra 3 for next August.
Remains that this market weighs still very little in the accounts of the group. The division Consumer, which integrates Tegra but also the royalties that the mark seen on sales of game consoles, has generated that 5 of the revenues of the group in 2010, $ 136 million. More than half ($1.8 billion) of the "business" of Nvidia still comes from graphics card (GPU) with the Geforce brand. And the group is also present in the professional segment through its Quadro mark, for example team supercomputers, or on the motherboards.
Nevertheless, the presence on smartphones is decisive for the future of the group. On the market of graphics cards for PC, its historic market, Nvidia face heightened competition from AMD and Intel both out, at the beginning of the year, integrating platforms both processor and graphics card, respectively termed Fusion and Sandy Bridge. However, Nvidia sells not processors for PC, and the Group thus loses market share, in any case on entries and midrange graphics cards.
A gap which could be soon remedied. Last January at the CES in Las Vegas, Microsoft announced that the next version of Windows operating system could support the ARM architecture. A revolution, since today ' today, 100 of the PC run the x 86 architecture, developed by Intel. Tomorrow, the players supporting ARM can therefore develop processors for PC. NVIDIA has already announced that he was working on this project, under the code name Denver. What excite investors: Nvidia stock market jumped by 25 since the announcement of Microsoft, and now Exchange 19,75 dollars on the New York Stock Exchange.
It therefore affects the overall performance of the FundIts effects depend on despite all of the form it takeshere two or three years of negative to stableAt the turn of the year yet things changeThe election was held by a traditional voteOn 15 June seven new paintings will be placed on the marketHis exposure to the Greece is estimated at 5If you believe in what you read both Tennessee and Auburn are backThis spring and summerchildren across the ULONDON Feb 3 Reuters German utility RWE RWE
