In a move meant to position HTC better in the mobile phone and tables space, HTC is buying old-name graphics company S3 from Via for the tidy sum of $300M.
“In the smartphone and tablet business, there are a lot of patent lawsuits,” said BNP Paribas analyst Laura Chen. “S3 has a lot of patents, and HTC needs more bargaining power in the smartphone business.”
S3 Graphics has been around for a very long time, but hasn’t been terribly relevant since Intel took over the embedded graphics space, and NVidia and AMD began battling over the addin-card market. However, they do have an impressive patent portfolio.
via Smartphone Maker HTC to Buy Chip Firm S3 Graphics for $300M | PCWorld.
