After extending losses from Friday's sell-off in the morning and afternoon, the Nasdaq managed a late-day rally that left the index up 1.1%. Today, we're checking in on two of the top storylines developing over the past 24 hours in technology.
Tech News No. 1: Chip consolidation is back in
Amid companies pulling back guidance and warning of trouble ahead, the technology sector is barreling ahead with plenty of merger-and-acquisition action. Today's headliner was Broadcom
Netlogic has been among the quicker growers in the chip industry. Its sales shot up from $96.8 million in 2006 all the way to $381.7 million last year. However, this growth hasn't come with outsized earnings gains. Despite stellar gross margins, NetLogic posted a pedestrian 4.6% operating profit margin in 2010.
Broadcom believes it'll be able to spur further bottom-line gains by leveraging its leadership in the networking-chip space to drive more adoption of NetLogic's high-tech networking processors. Expanding sales to more networking companies has long been NetLogic's aim. In 2006, Cisco
An interesting side note to the acquisition is that Broadcom is willing to pay such a premium while networking stocks like Cisco that sell to end customers languish. That raises an important point that the competitive dynamics along each part of an industry value chain are different. While Cisco might be struggling to control margins after it invited further competition when it stepped on its former partner's toes, networking in general is still seeing explosive growth.
In the coming months, be on the lookout for more possible mergers in the space. Broadcom's main rival, Marvell, is also cash rich and could look to make a buy of its own. Investors bid up smaller networking-chip plays EZChip and Cavium today in anticipation of further buyout action.
Tech News No. 2: Patents are still hot
Interest around mobile-patent specialist InterDigital
With just weeks to go until first-round bids are due, Bloomberg reports that buyers are starting to line up. On the obvious end are Samsung and HTC. Samsung accounted for 26% of InterDigital's revenue last year, so the company probably has good insight into the value of its patents. HTC has been trying to gain better patent protection after agreeing to stiff terms with Microsoft
Speaking of Microsoft, both it and Apple
On the more surprising end of bidding, Google -- which was seen as an early front-runner in the InterDigital sweepstakes -- is reportedly losing interest now that it has Motorola's patent trove. However, the most surprising entry is Intel
InterDigital is already worth about $3 billion, and there's speculation that final bidding for its patents could reach higher than $5 billion. It's unclear whether Intel would fold the patents into its existing operations or cross-license them to companies willing to use its processors in mobile devices to spur adoption of its mobile chips. However, what is clear is that if the company shells out north of $5 billion for mobile patents, it'll be Intel's biggest "all-in" moment in the mobile race.
That's it for today’s tech recap. To stay apprised, add any of the major companies mentioned here to our free My Watchlist service today:
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