Stefan Mileschin

Shares of AMD rose by nearly ten percent after rumours that fabless chipmaker Qualcomm might be thinking of buying the fabless chipmaker.

The rumours appear to have been based on an announcement that AMD made on Tuesday. AMD confirmed to ChannelBiz that John Byrne had been appointed Chief Sales Officer and suddenly there were some positive posts about AMD, generally.

Wall Street is a strange creature, particularly under the influence of powdered substances, and there was a little bit of chatter about how AMD was a good buy-out target.

This firstly created a rumour that the Korean tech giant Samsung was planning to acquire AMD for its processing technology.

However, that did not really make much sense. AMD produces processors for servers, desktops and laptops and not tablets or smartphones. Buying AMD would not really be much use to a company like Samsung.

Then Evercore Partners analyst Patrick Wang mentioned that Qualcomm also had its hat in the ring. The rumours started that Samsung and Qualcomm were involved either jointly or seperately.

Wang was quick to downplay his own rumour, but there is a school of thought which says it all makes sense, particularly if they are in it together.

Both AMD and Qualcomm lack fabs which Samsung has. AMD wants to get into the ARM mobile market, and Qualcomm would be happy if it can give Intel a kicking in the x86 market. Samsung would find itself making chips for both. By consolidating these three could put the wind up Intel.

Of course it all is just a rumour bought about because the summer is hot and AMD just appointed John Byrne.

http://news.techeye.net/chips/qualcomm-about-to-buy-amd