apple imagination royalties
6 months ago
Published January 2, 2020 by

Apple to pay royalties to Imagination Tech after all

From Mark Gurman’s “Apple Strikes New Deal with U.K. Chip Designer It Sidelined in 2017” posted Wednesday on Bloomberg.com:

When Imagination Technologies, then a public company, announced the loss of Apple as its biggest customer, its stock plummeted. The British company said in 2018 there may be “material uncertainty” regarding the future of the company if Apple doesn’t pay any royalties on its latest generation of iPhones and iPads. It’s unclear if Apple has paid those fees, but Imagination has argued it would be “extremely challenging for Apple to design a GPU in a way that allows them not to pay royalties to Imagination.”

My take: Sounds like Imagination was right about that. In the meantime, the company had to lay off 350 workers and sell itself to a Chinese buyout firm. Sometimes it sucks being an Apple supplier.

One Comment

  1. Jerry Doyle said:
    I suspect “Imagination Technologies” complaint has merit. Those of us who have run businesses most likely empathize with Imagination Technologies situation. Along comes this great contract that is a disproportionate greater amount of our revenues. We cultivate strong business and personal working relationships with the contractor finding ourselves ever more subconsciously blending with that company to retain our relationship all to the detriment of our own business viability should that relationship end. When it does end, the company you so trusted, its people you so cherished, look you in the eyes and say, “… Look, don’t take this personally, … its business.”

    1
    January 2, 2020

Leave a Reply