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Amazon reportedly looking to buy TI chip-maker at heart of Kindle Fire

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Mega-etailer Amazon is reportedly in talks to buy a mobile chip business from Texas Instruments.

TI's mobile chips, which are used in Amazon's Kindle Fire fondleslab, could be in the market as the company moves away from smartphones and other mobile devices and into industrial clients like carmakers.

If the talks lead to a deal, Amazon could pay billions of dollars for the division, Israeli financial newspaper Calcalist said.

TI said last month that it wanted to get out of the mobile memory-making business and into something a bit more profitable. The company told investors that it would still support customers, but it wasn't going to be investing the same amount in the business in future, according to a Reuters report.

Neither Amazon nor Texas Instruments had returned a request for comment at the time of publication. Calcalist said a TI spokeswoman told it that the company would not comment on rumours. ®

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Tips from a Pro

I've been in Semiconductors for over 20 years. Amazon is blindly walking into dangerous territory.

They can't own a chipmaking business that sells to itself and then expect their Kindle competitors to buy chips from them. Amazon will be seen as competing with their own customers. Plus, other Amazon Semiconductor customers will be afraid that if there is a shortage, Amazon products will suck up all the supply leaving Amazon Semiconductor's chip customers with inactive factories.

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Anonymous Coward

It's called vertical integration. You can cut out the profits made by the chip maker.

It worked great for Commodore in the 80s. They slaughtered TI back then.

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Re: TI

They may be thinking about hardware solutions for self-driven cars.

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