It’s been another wobbly week for the global semiconductor industry. Nvidia suffered the biggest one-day loss in stock market history, while Intel kept making headlines for its plans to cut costs.
California-based Intel, which makes chips used in laptops and desktop computers around the world, is considering a host of cost-cutting options, after reporting a disastrous second quarter and plans to cut 15 percent of its workforce.
On Friday morning, Reuters reported that Qualcomm, known for its mobile phone chips, was looking at buying parts of Intel’s semiconductor design business.
Bloomberg has also reported other ways Intel is thinking about shoring up cash, like scrapping a politically controversial plan for a factory in Germany.
Intel’s Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner said on Wednesday that the company was in talks with 12 potential customers who could generate revenue over the next two years.
He said Intel would be scrapping one generation of its manufacturing process, known as 20A, in order to focus entirely on the most cutting-edge one, 18A.
But this plan appeared to hit a speedbump when Reuters reported that Broadcom, another chipmaker, wasn’t satisfied with tests involving 18A.
The tough questions keep coming.
Next week, Intel is one of the companies called before the United States senate to address concerns about American-manufactured semiconductors in Russian weapons.
Nvidia meanwhile has lost about a fifth of its value since its peak of 3.3 trillion dollars in mid-June.
Tuesday was the worst day for the California-based chip designer – a decline of 279 billion dollars in market value.
Partly fuelling that decline was a Bloomberg report that the US Justice Department had subpoenaed Nvidia as part of an antitrust investigation.
Despite this tough week, the chip sector as a whole continues to thrive with sales reaching more than 51 billion dollars in July, up almost 19% from last year.
