Most developers use additional compression on top of GPU file formats (such as LZMA, ZLIB, etc) and their own custom data packaging formats. It would be hard to find all textures from a big binary blob (custom package directory format that is now known to Apple), especially if some of that data is compressed with third party compression tools. And even if you found that data, it would be hard to replace it, because you'd have to be able to modify the developer's custom data package format. Unless of course the new compression format produces exactly same size images (ASTC compression ratio is different from PVRTC). Not an easy task.
Also, I am unsure how transcoding on a server would avoid the PVRTC license. Do you only need a license for local encoding (on device), but not when you are offloading encoding to a server? There's too much speculation. Nobody seems to have read the patent, so nobody knows what it covers.
First, I note somewhat disapointingly, that the thread title has changed emphasis significantly from the one I used when starting the thread. Although I can't recall the exact wording, the thread was created to discuss the official statement from IMG that Apple had told them they will not be using PowerVr IP in the future. But apparently the thread is now about Apple's ongoing use ? The title now indicates the thread is just a general talking shop on the subject, whereas it was actually created to specificially talk about the official statement and the ramifications of it. I understand that there are currently and former IMG employees here, and certainly I have no intention of rubbing someone the wrong way. But the news IS that Apple as far as they are concerned are cutting all ties with IMG. IMG might have a different view, but I'm not sure that required the thread title to be changed.
Anyhow, I'll repeat here what I said in another place.
No one in their right mind would NOT want to have Apple as a customer, and if you have Apple as a customer, then given their volume, they will always be pivotal to your business, unless you have 20+ smaller customers that can dilute that reliance.
IMGs problem has historically been that they were unable to get that reliance on apple down to a lower % figure. The single biggest missed opportunity remains mediatek. Just as mediatek's soc volume exploded, IMG failed to retain / take seats in the socs. In those missed years, Mediatek shipped 200M+ socs, followed by 300M+ etc.
Not that even at that level would they approach the income from Apple, but it would have spread things a little.
IMG currently have £40M+ debt. That debt is soley there because just about every single penny of profit generated from apple for 6-7 years went across the road at Kings Langley and straight down the PURE plughole. IMG would be sitting on a significant cashpile and thus be in a far healthier situation to deal with the current events, had it not been for the CEO's plaything known as PURE. IMO Several key top management decisions see IMG in the position it is in today.
It is worth remembering that IMG at least have some time to figure out a plan going forward. Significant cash will still be generated from Apple for the next 12-24 months, or maybe longer if they can come to a new deal. Unfortunately given Apple's history, I think once they make a decision they stick with it, so I would not be hopeful of IMG coming to a different arrangment with them.
And what of a legal challenge? Well first, you need a real product for infringement. So, that can't happen until Apple have produced something. At that point all hope of a deal is gone. Now you need some evidence there is infringment. Other that circumstantial, I don't know how you get that. PowerVr texture compression is ingrained in IOS, and virtually all current games use it. So that might be a starting point. However most importantly, IMG don't have the money to do this. So a legal play will only happen if someone buys them.
What remains totally screwy is why Apple simply didn't buy IMG once Intel lost interest and sold their shares. IMG have been pretty much the perfect partner for Apple. Delivering top quality graphics IP, entirely keeping with Apple's needs of having best in class SOCs.
According to the official results, IMG got £60M from Apple last year. Assume this financial year (end of this month) and next financial year, it'll be similar. That's £180M. So pay £180M in fees, or pay say £500-£600M and buy the company, which was entirely possible given it's low price point around the time of the shake-up and the CEO's departure.There has been some nonsense suggested that IMG management played hardball during the talks. However, the bottom line is that other than putting out a "we don't recommend accepting at this price...." statement, they would have virtually no control over proceedings. Apple make an share price offer, and if it's acceptable to the insitutional investors, IMG is sold.
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two other thoughts.
1) The IMG statement does give us confirmation for the first time that the apple watch uses IMG IP
1) The IMG statement does give us confirmation for the first time that the apple watch uses IMG IP
2) Does apple still use PowerVr video encode/decode in recent SOCs ? Has apple already replaced this. If not then clearly Apple have replacements lined up, or have developed their own.
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D
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Probably because they couldn't get to an agreement on how much IMG would be worth.
Maybe because they already have something lined up with Mediatek.
Considering MediaTek's general low GPU performance, someone at MediaTek probably wish that had come through too.
It's not too late for MediaTek to buy IMGTec though.
Cheers
It's a publicly listed company, they don't need IMG's agreement. They ask people that deal with these things to sound out the main shareholders (i.e. institutional investors) to get a view on what would be an acceptable offer price.
It's entirely possible (and has happened before) for the offer to be materially different from the market cap. In fact, it usually is. The value is still abstracted into a share price, but it doesn't have to be based on it. There is no current offer on the table for Imagination, and I don't expect there to be an acquisition in the immediate future. For this, we blame leadership.
Nothing i said suggested otherwise, the salient point is that if X wants to buy Y, and X is a publicly listed company, X doesn't have much influence in the matter. It certainly doesnt require X to agree a price.
D
Deleted member 13524
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By "they" I meant apple and IMG's shareholders.
I mentioned mediatek because they may have approached IMG's management with a better purchase deal, and this information was passed on to key shareholders.
I mentioned mediatek because they may have approached IMG's management with a better purchase deal, and this information was passed on to key shareholders.
If that was the case, then those in charge of the various major sharholdings must be in regretful mode right now. Their holding is now down 60% compared to pre Apple-exit (Apexit ?) announcement, and is even less than it was during the turmoil around the CEO's departure, when the Apple discussions took place.
Well if it's truly in-house they'll prioritise accordingly. If AR is really as important as they say, they'll be optimising their GPU for that. I'm still having a hard time picturing Apple AR hardware...
Presupposition that their stock value recovers slowly.
There's nothing missing considering machine learning, computer vision etc. in IMG's GPU IP; au contraire they're well ahead their direct competition in the ULP mobile space. As for anything VR/AR I have the same hard time as you for it. In fact I'll be even more bold here and will claim extremely surprised if Apple has developed anything that is well ahead in terms of efficiency compared to their current licensed GPU IP.
I quickly searched for Mc Combe since he had left IMG, but his current job doesn't seem to trace any rays at all https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmccombe/
Once upon a time, Imagination shrewdly gained a head start in a market with massive potential, GPUs for pocket computers, wielding their best-in-class processor designs. They quickly dominated this rapidly growing market, appearing in the SoC implementations of most of the major players like Samsung and TI and even serving as ARM's own GPU reference design for a while.
As Imagination looked out onto the exploding landscape of pocket and embedded processing technology and took account of the advantageous position they had earned, they decided to chart a course to own a broad expanse of it. They would offer hardware IP, associated software IP, tool sets, ecosystems, platforms, and implementation services for every kind of processing from display algorithms to imaging to communication protocols to VOIP to microcontrollers and even a grab at CPUs.
The fundamental understanding for targeting efficiency that their engineers possessed in designing processors unfortunately didn't extend to their executive's approach to growing the company. They were always stretching a little too far a little too fast, never booking the profits a company with such a large piece of a such a strong market should've. They had justifiably high expectations and valuations for themselves, but they didn't adapt those to the inevitable consolidation that retrenched the opportunity available in the market as fiercely as it had once expanded. Whereas the prevailing logic once was to not sit out the multitude of opportunities offered by the wider, open market of licensees, the game of musical chairs that suddenly established itself within the GPU IP market necessitated grabbing the best seat available and not leaving any room to be squeezed off.
The greatest benefit of Apple's success is that they can afford to remain beholden to no one. They not only know this, they know all the long term benefits to competitiveness, flexibility, and differentiation it brings outweighs any short term savings they'd get from settling on patent disputes, licensing arrangements, and the like. Ownership of the GPU technology on which they depend is the driving motivation of their actions here, not the idea that some future architecture they have in mind can be done best by some team they've pieced together in recent years compared to the design expertise of their long time, world-class partner.
Once upon a time, the openness of the market was such that Apple couldn't have expected a complete and total commitment from Imagination, but Apple eventually represented not only the best possible showcase for their technology but also the best market opportunity. Letting Apple take ownership for a fair price would've been a no-brainer.
Apple should still buy Imagination for whatever price they were offering before. I don't think Apple's internal GPU has much of a chance at being competitively efficient, yet I don't think they care at first. I think their first goal is simply to own their technology, and they feel they can iterate as long as they need until they've got a competitive offering.
As Imagination looked out onto the exploding landscape of pocket and embedded processing technology and took account of the advantageous position they had earned, they decided to chart a course to own a broad expanse of it. They would offer hardware IP, associated software IP, tool sets, ecosystems, platforms, and implementation services for every kind of processing from display algorithms to imaging to communication protocols to VOIP to microcontrollers and even a grab at CPUs.
The fundamental understanding for targeting efficiency that their engineers possessed in designing processors unfortunately didn't extend to their executive's approach to growing the company. They were always stretching a little too far a little too fast, never booking the profits a company with such a large piece of a such a strong market should've. They had justifiably high expectations and valuations for themselves, but they didn't adapt those to the inevitable consolidation that retrenched the opportunity available in the market as fiercely as it had once expanded. Whereas the prevailing logic once was to not sit out the multitude of opportunities offered by the wider, open market of licensees, the game of musical chairs that suddenly established itself within the GPU IP market necessitated grabbing the best seat available and not leaving any room to be squeezed off.
The greatest benefit of Apple's success is that they can afford to remain beholden to no one. They not only know this, they know all the long term benefits to competitiveness, flexibility, and differentiation it brings outweighs any short term savings they'd get from settling on patent disputes, licensing arrangements, and the like. Ownership of the GPU technology on which they depend is the driving motivation of their actions here, not the idea that some future architecture they have in mind can be done best by some team they've pieced together in recent years compared to the design expertise of their long time, world-class partner.
Once upon a time, the openness of the market was such that Apple couldn't have expected a complete and total commitment from Imagination, but Apple eventually represented not only the best possible showcase for their technology but also the best market opportunity. Letting Apple take ownership for a fair price would've been a no-brainer.
Apple should still buy Imagination for whatever price they were offering before. I don't think Apple's internal GPU has much of a chance at being competitively efficient, yet I don't think they care at first. I think their first goal is simply to own their technology, and they feel they can iterate as long as they need until they've got a competitive offering.
I agree - history has shown that technical metrics (perf/w, perf/mm2) matter less to the mobile SoC space than bundling, integration, and market position. Consumers aren't in a position to differentiate between mobile devices based on GPU or even SoC. The software isn't there for them even to notice much about the efficiency or technical sophistication of a component like a GPU. People will buy the next iPhone regardless of its technical components.
Having seen IMG's IP and roadmap for the next 4 years, I'd agree with the sentiment that they have the best in-class technology in terms of efficiency and performance. Whether anyone uses it outside of Apple is a different story. However, I would bet on Apple at least being competitive in that regard.
But that begs the question - why not acquire IMG if their in-house solution is <10% better (just a random number)? It just seems like a ton of effort just to make something slightly better. Not buying Imagination speaks volumes about their belief in their own solution's competitiveness. Also, I don't think they can really buy IMG anymore (regulatory oversight in EU + the share price drop/antitrust).
I don't think IMG ever wanted to get bought in the first place. Apple's attempt to acquire them was officially mentioned after IMG's CEO resigned. Aren't the times of hostile takeovers long gone or could it be there are legal issues that keeps Apple from forcing an acquisition? (yes now as you say obsiously but I mean before that....).
