Intel has purchased part of the large wireless chip maker Infineon Technologies AG, buying the company behind the chips used in the Apple iPhone.
The company has fallen far behind in the growing smartphone processor market since their technology uses too much power, draining the phone battery too quickly.
With the acquisition today, for $1.4 billion in cash, Intel now has the wireless-chip division of the company, and an instant “in” to the market.
Intel purchased the mobile software company Wind River Systems last year for $885 million, and they have since been creating the mobile OS dubbed “Moblin,” which will run on smartphones using Intel chips.
Additionally, the company recently paid $7.68 billion for the large security software firm McAfee, and the company plans to integrate security into its mobile chips.
Result for: intel chips
Rental giant Netflix has announced that Mac users can finally use the “Watch Instantly” service on their computers, however it will only work on Macs based on Intel chips.
For now, the updated service “will initially touch a small percentage of new Netflix subscribers,” but as Apple is expected to keep Intel chips in their Macs for the future, future Mac users should be happy with the service.
The service is built on Microsoft’s Silverlight software and Mac users will have to download a Silverlight player to play Netflix’s extensive streaming library.
The company did add however that about 70 percent of their subscribers with Macs have Intel chipsets.
“Watch Instantly” has been available for Windows users since early 2007.
