According to a recent rumor coming from a Korean business media, word on the street has it that Samsung could be thinking about acquiring AMD which is a little odd when you think about it. Granted, both companies are in the computer business and both companies make their own chips, but they are also very different.
Samsung’s computers generally rely on Intel’s chips and AMD has little to no presence in the smartphone and tablet market. However, there are some possibilities to the rumored acquisition and that is Samsung could be interested in AMD’s vast patent portfolio when it come to the designing and building of chips, and let’s not forget the Samsung’s own decades of experience in the field as well. After all, Google did buy Motorola for $12B before reselling it (minus patents) to Lenovo for $3B, giving the patents a $9B value. AMD’s current valuation is $2B since its stock has been going down since 2012.
There are branding options as well – who wouldn’t like the idea of seeing Radeon branded GPUs inside their mobile devices down the road? It would also give Samsung something to boast and lord over their competitors in the field, assuming that PC Radeon tech could be integrated in mobile chips as efficiently as NVIDIA has done with its own architectures in Tegra K1 and Tegra X1 .
AMD would also undoubtedly benefit from Samsung’s acquisition as the company is no longer as popular as it used to be, and with Samsung’s resources they would be able to further their R&D efforts into creating something that would (maybe) propel them back to their Athlon glory days. But again when it comes to building technology, money isn’t the only issue.
As wild as this rumor might sound, a report from back in 2007 had reportedly quoted Samsung’s head of telecommunications as saying, “It is necessary to consider the AMD acquisition in order to secure a new growth engine.” However this is just a rumor for now and in the past, we have heard rumors about potential Samsung acquisitions that later turned out to be false, so be sure to take it with generous doses of salt for now.