British chip designer Imagination Technologies Group PLC said that it has struck a new license agreement with Apple Inc, reviving a business relationship that had all but ended in the past few years.
The company, which was sold to Chinese buyout firm Canyon Bridge Capital Partners LLC (凱橋資本) for £500 million (US$661.42 million at the current exchange rate) in September 2017, yesterday said that it “formed a new multi-year license agreement under which Apple has access to a wider range of Imagination’s intellectual property [IP] in exchange for license fees.”
Apple previously used graphics chips, or GPUs, in its iPhones and iPads that were designed by Imagination Technologies, but it moved to its own internal chip designs starting with the iPhone X in 2017 and the iPad Pro in 2018.
The US company also uses its own graphics processors in the Apple Watch.
It told Imagination Technologies in 2017 that it would stop using its IP in new products within two years.
When Imagination Technologies, then a public company, announced the loss of Apple as its biggest customer, its stock plummeted.
The British company in 2018 said that there might be “material uncertainty” regarding the future of the company if Apple did not pay any royalties on its latest generation of iPhones and iPads.
It is unclear if Apple paid those fees, but Imagination has argued that it would be “extremely challenging for Apple to design a GPU in a way that allows them not to pay royalties to Imagination.”
The company yesterday did not specify which IP the latest agreement covers, but Imagination’s IP related to graphics and artificial intelligence could be key to future Apple devices.
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