Only a few weeks ago, Texas Instruments announced that it was looking to sell-off its smartphone SoC business, returning its focus to embedded electronics. The market for smartphone chips is a fast-evolving and highly competitive one, where, without a large enough client base, it's both difficult and costly to stay ahead.
One of TI's clients of the moment is Amazon, with TI OMAP processors currently present in the firm's latest Kindle Fire tablets. Amazon has been rumoured to have displayed an interest in the acquisition of TI's mobile division as a means to provide cost-effective chips for its Kindle line.
We do wonder whether Amazon will come to the same realisation that maintaining an SoC for a single product may be an excessive and unnecessary overhead, or if the firm will be able to make financial sense out of such a move. Naturally, Amazon could become a seller of chips itself, though as new kid on the block, it may have a tough time; mind you, Apple appears to have no trouble dabbling in the design of its own SoCs.
It'll be interesting to see if and how this story evolves over the next few months, hobbyists and engineers may soon find themselves purchasing ICs from and made by Amazon, though we suspect that reality will see this one shoved under the rug.
