14 DAY TRIAL // There have been quite a few rumors in the last couple of months that Nvidia might be dropping its cellular chip business is favor of other endeavors, but the company was mum on these speculations until today.
Without any further ado, it looks like Nvidia has just confirmed it will exit the cellular modem marker and that this business is now up for the taking by the highest bidder.
Furthermore, the company announced that it will “wind down” its Icera modem operations in the second quarter of fiscal 2016 and that the company it bought back in 2011 is open to a sale of the technology or operations.
Nvidia purchased Icera about 4 years ago with the sole purpose of entering the smartphone market with “a leading integrated application processor and modem platform.”
Faced with competition from Qualcomm, Snapdragon and MediaTek, Icera collapsed
Although the company has reshaped its strategy numerous times, it looks like it did worked o as Nvidia wanted. Icera focused development in areas like gaming, automotive and cloud computing applications like deep learning, where its visual computing expertise is greatly valued.
Moreover, the Icera 4G LTE modem meets the company's needs for the next year or more, so they are expecting to partner with third-party modem suppliers and will no longer develop its own.
Nvidia also confirmed that the Icera modem operation has approximately 500 employees, based primarily in the U.K. and France, with smaller operations in Asia and the United States.
While Nvidia's move isn't exactly surprising, perhaps it's worth mentioning that the company is likely to have looked for possible buyers but couldn't find any, hence the announcement.
In other news, Nvidia stated that further details, including the financial impact, will be provided when NVIDIA's first quarter financial results are announced on Thursday, May 7.