This is a big blow for Imagination Technologies, a British semiconductor manufacturer, who for nearly ten years has been supplying Apple with its PowerVR Graphics Chips to power iPhone and iPad.The company in Cupertino has decided to stop its collaboration with the company "within fifteen months to two years" in order to manufacture its own GPU, insisted Imagination Technologies in a statement. Apple now wants to work independently and separately on its own chip to take control over its products and reduce its reliance on Imagination Technologies.
Apple drops Imagination Technologies
This is not the first time that Apple decided to internally repatriate the manufacture of a major component, which has already adopted this strategy for its CPU. More recently, when designing the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, the company wanted to bring some "home" optimizations to the PowerVR Imagination Technologies.
This gives a glimpse of its intentions regarding manufacturing, eventually, controlled from end to end, and which would allow it to achieve some significant savings.
In the wake of the announcement, on Monday morning, the stock market of Imagination Technologies has seen its course collapse more than 60% because such a decision on the part of Apple amounts to directly threatening the existence of the British company, whose income could be divided by two after the cessation of cooperation. In March 2016, Apple had confirmed that it had "discussed with Imagination" to explore the track of a buyout, before changing its mind.
An impossible exit without legal problems?
However, Imagination believes that Apple may not yet be entirely ready to manage the visual part of its phones and tablets alone, at least without causing high judicial problems (as it was already the case with the Qualcomm company). At this point, everything leads us to believe that the iPhone 8 will retain a modified PowerVR GPU, similar to the one that equips the iPhone 7.
"Apple has so far shown no evidence that it will no longer need Imagination technologies without infringing its patents, intellectual property, and confidential information. Imagination has requested this evidence, but Apple has declined to provide it," said the founder of the English firm in a statement.
