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The ongoing feud between Apple and Imagination Technologies could be about heat up even further. In the midst of the ongoing chip row, Apple has announced that it is set to open an office on the British microchip company’s doorstep. Renting a 22,500 square-foot office in St Albarns, Imagination is now understandably worried that Apple will poach its most talented staff as the US giant looks to develop its own graphics technology after dumping Imagination.
Shares in the company plummeted by more than 60 per cent in April, when Apple controversially revealed that it would be pulling the plug on its partnership with Imagination Technologies at some point within the next two years. With royalties from Apple accounting for around half of the British chipmaker’s revenue last year, Imagination Technologies continues to contest Apple’s ability to create its own product without violating the companies agreement. The Hertfordshire-based chipmaker believes that Apple’s plan to replace Imagination’s intellectual property – used in Apple product graphics processors – with its own version would violate the company’s patents.
"We improved our financial performance across the business, Boss Andrew Heath said: "We returned the business to profitability and saw good cash generation despite the outflow from the now discontinued businesses. However, Apple’s unsubstantiated assertions and the resultant dispute have forced us to change our course, despite the clear progress we have been making."
Apple’s plans to develop its own parts comes as financial analysts predict that Samsung may overtake Apple as the world’s largest tech company. The main difference between the two at the moment is that Samsung designs and makes all its components while Apple outsources. In fact, Apple will be using Samsung’s OLED screens on its upcoming iPhone 8 series.
Apple has also announced that it will it will spend 6 billion Danish crowns ($921 million) on a new data centre in Denmark, its second in the Nordic country to run entirely on renewable energy.
