British company Imagination technologies suffered a major blow in April when it was revealed Apple was moving GPU development for the iPad and iPhone in-house. Imagination's PowerVR GPUs had been the choice since the very first iPhone, but that's about to change. Inevitably, the company's value tumbled and there's likely going to be a few lawsuits over IP infringement by Apple.
Imagination's decisions since the Apple news demonstrate how much of a reliance they had on iDevice GPU sales. Both the MIPS processors and Ensigma communications operations were put up for sale. However, the whole Imagination Technologies group is now going to be sold.
According to Imagination, several parties have shown an interest in acquiring the company over the past few weeks. The board decided it was a good idea and a formal sale process is being initiated. We don't know who the interested parties are yet, but preliminary discussions are underway.
Now here's where it gets interesting. The break-up with Apple does raise questions about how Apple intends to develop a new GPU without infringing any of Imagination's patents. At the same time, Apple owns an eight percent share in the company. So who is likely to acquire Imagination?
Apple could save itself a lot of legal pain by doing so, and it certainly has the cash to spare. Apple would also block a rival company taking control of Imagination's patents and attempting to make life difficult for the company. With that in mind, would Samsung consider buying them? Who else?