Oracle Corp, building on a run of more than 65 acquisitions during the past five years, is looking to purchase semiconductor companies and makers of industry-specific software, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said.
“You’re going to see us buying chip companies,” Ellison, 66, said on Thursday at Oracle’s annual meeting in San Francisco.
Acquiring chipmakers would further Oracle’s push into computer hardware, initiated in January with its purchase of Sun Microsystems Inc, a server manufacturer.
Ellison said he wanted to follow the approach of Apple Inc CEO Steve Jobs by owning more of the intellectual property that underpins computer chips.
Apple has bought semiconductor makers to help develop devices such as the iPad and iPhone.
Oracle already acquired some chip know-how from Sun, which makes servers based on its own chip design, Sparc, while also using personal-computer chips from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
Oracle may buy a semiconductor company with technology for servers, said Doug Freedman, an analyst at Gleacher & Co in San Francisco.
Potential targets include AMD, IBM Corp’s chip division and Nvidia Corp, he said.
“You’ve got to think it’s focused on enterprise hardware, on the server,” he said. “AMD jumps off the screen.”
Oracle also plans to buy more makers of software focused on certain industries, Ellison said.
By zeroing in on specific areas, the company aims to stand out from rivals such as SAP AG.
“We want to play in every important industry,” he said.
Oracle, based in Redwood City, California, is the world’s second-largest software company, which had US$23.6 billion in cash and short-term investments at the end of its fiscal first quarter.
The US Department of State yesterday criticized Beijing over its misrepresentation of the US’ “one China” policy in the latest diplomatic salvo between the two countries over a bid by Taiwan to regain its observer status at the World Health Assembly, the decisionmaking body of the WHO. “The PRC [People’s Republic of China] continues to publicly misrepresent U.S. policy,” Department of State spokesman Ned Price wrote on Twitter. “The United States does not subscribe to the PRC’s ‘one China principle’ — we remain committed to our longstanding, bipartisan one China policy, guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, Three Joint Communiques, and
FATES LINKED: The US president said that sanctions on Russia over Ukraine must exact a ‘long-term price,’ because otherwise ‘what signal does that send to China?’ US President Joe Biden yesterday vowed that US forces would defend Taiwan militarily in the event of a Chinese attack in his strongest statement to date on the issue. Beijing is already “flirting with danger,” Biden said following talks with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo, in which the pair agreed to monitor Chinese naval activity and joint Chinese-Russian exercises. Asked if Washington was willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan, he replied: “Yes.” “That’s the commitment we made,” Biden said. “We agreed with the ‘one China’ policy, we signed on to it ... but the idea that it can be
INFORMATION LEAKED: Documents from Xinjiang purportedly showed top leaders in Beijing calling for a forceful crackdown and even orders to shoot to kill Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday held a videoconference with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet as she visited Xinjiang during a mission overshadowed by fresh allegations of Uighur abuses and fears she is being used as a public relations tool. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been accused of detaining more than 1 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the region as part of a years-long crackdown the US and lawmakers in other Western nations have labeled a “genocide.” China denies the allegations. Bachelet was expected to visit the cities of Urumqi and Kashgar on a six-day tour. The US
SUBTLE? While Biden said the US policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ on Taiwan had not changed, the group targeted China and Russia without naming them Leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the US yesterday warned against attempts to “change the status quo by force,” as concerns grow about whether China could invade Taiwan. The issue of Taiwan loomed over a leadership meeting in Tokyo of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) nations — the US, Japan, Australia and India — who stressed their determination to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific region in the face of an increasingly assertive China, although Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the group was not targeting any one country. The four leaders said in a joint statement issued after their talks
RSS