Apple: Always Think A Few Moves Ahead

Apple has bought out chipmaker, PA Semi, for $278 million. It’s all over the news. Any move Steve Jobs and Apple make these days is breaking news. It’s analyzed, parsed, and feeds dozens if not hundreds of sites dedicated to the Cupertino-based company, not to mention mainstream news outlets just trolling for hits.

Well, we’re no different. But we like to offer something more concrete for this piece of raw red meat.

This is a potential game changer. No one has any idea what Apple will do with it for now. Conventional wisdom says that Apple will be planning on using its brand new chips in their upcoming products. Look for Macworld 2009 but we don’t mind being surprised by the developer conference in June. C’mon, Steve. One more thing … please.

Until this buyout took place, Atom from Intel was the designated chip that Apple is supposedly going to use in their upcoming mobile devices. So, leave it to Cupertino to take the fun out of conventional wisdom and go into a totally different direction.



I’m not a chip expert so I won’t go into any idea and regurgitate stuff you can already find on the web yourself (assuming you know only the basics about mobile chips like I do). So, I’m surmising that this new PowerPC chip is beyond anything Intel’s Atom can do in terms of performance and power usage and an outright buyout of PA Semi is a way so Apple can keep the chips off the hands of its competitors.

Apple has done its homework. Pa Semi’s chips work as advertised and it’s what Jobs wants. Of course, it could also be a shot at Intel to remind them who wears the pants in their relationships. Assuming that’s what Jobs also intend to do with this buyout.

But we all know Steve’s not like that at all.