14 DAY TRIAL // Apple announced that it ended its partnership with British-based Imagination Technologies and the Cupertino company intends to design and produce its own graphics chip for upcoming iPhones and iPads.
Imagination Technologies will no longer design and produce graphics chips for Apple, as the partnership is set to end in two years, while the US tech giant will develop its own technology.
“Apple has asserted that it has been working on a separate, independent graphics design in order to control its products and will be reducing its future reliance on Imagination’s technology,” reads Imagination Technologies’ press release.
Apple has been using PowerVR graphics in iPhones, iPads, iPods, TVs and watches for years now, while production of in-house chips would allow the tech giant to cut down on costs with royalties and license agreements.
Imagination Technologies is skeptical about Apple’s new strategy
Imagination Technologies has requested Apple to provide evidence that it won’t violate patents, intellectual property and confidential information that the company currently holds, but Apple refused to provide such evidence.
Furthermore, “Imagination believes that it would be extremely challenging to design a brand new GPU architecture from basics without infringing its intellectual property rights, accordingly Imagination does not accept Apple’s assertions.”
Still, Imagination has announced that it’s open to discuss “alternative commercial arrangements” with Apple, which means that the two companies might end up returning to the previous partnership at some point. Apple accounts for about half of Imagination’s entire revenue and since the announcement was made earlier today, Imagination’s stock value dropped over 70%, putting the company in a rather uncomfortable situation.
Even if Apple designed its own graphics processors, it would have only one year and 15 months to do so and they might be incorporated in iPhones that would arrive in 2019, at the earliest. It remains to be seen if the companies will reach some sort of agreement in the end. Until then, Apple is busy working on new features for its upcoming iPhone 8, iPhone 7s and iPhone 7s Plus.