Apple has lost the chance to buy most of Renesas’s SP Drivers business, which would have given it the chance to build its own display chip platform and gain control of another important iDevice component.
Troubled Japanese firm Renesas Electronics is looking to sell its majority stake in SP Drivers, but is now in exclusive talks with Synaptics, a specialist in touchscreen controllers, after Apple negotiations broke down.
According to Reuters, Apple had been poised to pay about ’50bn ($479m) for Renesas’s 55% holding and to take on most of the unit’s 240 staff in Japan. The rest of the venture is owned 25% by Sharp ‘ which is also expected to sell its share once the initial deal is completed ‘ and 20% by Taiwan’s Powerchip.
Renesas SP Drivers is the world leader in drivers and controllers for small and medium LCD displays, with about 33% market share, and it is Apple’s only source of LCD chips for the iPhone. So ‘ given the importance of the display to the differentiation of high end mobile devices ‘ it seemed logical that the US firm would seek greater control of this element. As Apple reportedly prepares to increase the size of the iPhone’s screen for the first time (to 4.7-inches, say sources), the quality of the display is an increasingly important factor.
In order to control the iDevices’ differentiating features, and to keep an iron grip on the supply and price of important components, Apple has invested in various technology suppliers, most notably PA Semi, which helped it create its own mobile processor. It has also taken a stake in an Arizona sapphire plant and owns 10% of its GPU supplier, Imagination Technologies.