This can not be permitted,
3
I think AAPL would like this deal to be completed. QCOM is the only company that is big & powerful enough to negotiate and ask for a disproportional price of its chips on AAPL's gadgets. Get rid of QCOM headed by an engineer and future dealing with AVGO headed by a MBA should be much easier and pleasant. This deal will be done.
2
Two thoughts...
Is there anything to stop Broadcom from moving their headquarters back offshore after the merger?
Is Apple really behind this? Will Qualcomm be sold to them?
2
One of the most serious but unrecognized failings of governments of recent decades is their refusal to take on large-scale corporate mergers. It is no accident that anti-trust legislation was one of the first regulatory initiatives of the last century. The destructive power of monopolies and oligopolies has increasingly plagued the economy and consumers in recent decades. From pharmaceutical companies to airlines, mergers have enabled the corporate sector to institute predatory pricing and to victimize the public (how was your last flying experience?). Democratic administrations have been no more useful on our behalf than Republican ones.
Now we are to enter another round of eliminating competition, this time involving the innards of the electronic devices upon which we have become dependent. The necessary tools exist to prevent this, but they will sit idle once again. In time we will suffer for it and not really understand why.
6
This is what happens when large corporations have more money than they know what to do with. Do they pay their workers higher wages and salaries with it? No. Do they double their efforts on research and development? No. Do the swallow up the competition and put people out of work? Yes. So why give them a big tax break?
8
One look at all those laughing faces gives me an extremely dim view of the entire proceedings. One face, in particular. I will only tentatively approve this merger if the resultant corporate entity is named Commcon.
8
Qualcomm is a company in decline...it has latent value in its IP.
2
You can tell what this is all about by looking at the stupid smug smile on DJTs face... Enough said...
9
In my opinion, consolidation amongst suppliers just drives up costs. If this deal were to go through, it would effectively leave two suppliers; Intel and Broadcom.
5
..and Mediatek, LG, Samsung, Spreadtrum, Dialog, ON, Cavium, Marvell etc.
3
The basic premise of the Republican planned corporate tax cut is - If you let corporations keep more of their profits, they will do the "right things" with those profits. They will build more US facilities and hire more people.
Broadcom is clearly demonstrating what many corporations actually do when they feel flush with cash - They buy-out competitors, ultimately close facilities, and lay off people.
25
It is symptomatic that a US firm is being purchased by a South Korean firm. The implications are huge but aren't being considered . In other areas, the same happened : synthesizers (Moog, Kurzweil, Emu etc) were developed in the USA and subsequently the whole business sector moved to asia. These mergers are destructive for occidental industry. Europe is being bought out by the Chinese.
4
What does Donald Trump have to do with this? Why is he got that smiling-ish look on his face, and why is he included here in this article?
What good will this do the American worker besides a job? Benefits? Pensions? Health? Less hours and more with family?
When Donald Trump is involved usually the only person who benefits are his friends and himself.
10
Most of Qualcomm's valuable patents pertain to 3G and LTE technology, which is already dated--the world has moved on to 4G and beyond. Apple found its way around Qualcomm's patents because it went out and got better lawyers. Qualcomm is in decline, so a takeover is inevitable, and a lot of engineers in San Diego are going to lose their jobs. Broadcom hasn't grown by producing new and better technology but by taking over other companies and cutting their staff. That's not growth. It's consolidation.
18
Beg to differ. Credible coverage of this hostile bid point out that QCOM has an arguable lead in 5G technology, not 3G. Check your facts.
4
Not true--they are leading the way in 4 and 5G also.
3
That's odd. If Qualcomm is in decline, why waste the money on a hostile takeover?
1
If this doesn't fail anti-trust review, nothing will.
12
The timing of President Trump's joint announcement with Broadcom's CEO was merely a coincidence, right?
16
I thought we had laws against monopolies.
8
The bottom line on these kinds of proposed mega-mergers is whether they will benefit consumers. Usually, they don't do anything for consumers, except reduce competition, and thus raise prices. If recent drug shortages have taught us anything, especially following the hurricane in Puerto Rico, surely it is that we need a diverse array of suppliers for the items that are critical to our lives and our economies.
5
$105B? I cannot even comprehend. Cell phones will be the death of mankind, one way or another.
4
Is Broadcom still controlled by the fine, upstanding men who ran it back in the '90s?
2
It is not. After the Broadcom acquisition management was replaced with mostly ethnic Chinese with questionable national allegiance. I fear that this is a covert attempt by the Chinese to acquire US technology and recapture Chinese nationals that studied and emigrated to the US.
6
Setting aside corporate consultation concerns for the usuals reasons, this issue bears consideration from a national security perspective.
The fewer major chipmakers there are, the chance increase for the pollution of the supply chain with backdoors, bad code, or other unanticipated deliberate attacks.
Sure, the chips are in your watch or your phone or your fridge or oven but it’s also in the missile, the jet, the smart gun, the ballistic missile shield, the firewall machine at the server center etc.
Do we really want to put all of our eggs in this basket? I think it’s proven beyond a doubt by now that no industry is secure and the risk that some bad actor could introduce a flaw early on in the manufacture of an advanced system.
17
I think the issue involving Qualcomm is pretty straightforward. It spent a lot of money developing patented technology used for cell phones. If Apples wants to use them Apple pays the piper. If not Apple can head over to Intel and get them to spend billions to develop these sophisticated chips. Apple plays hardball with its suppliers and why shouldn't Qualcomm do the same.
17
Qualcom wants to charge Apple more for the same patent it charges other phone manufacturer because iPhone sell for a higher price. It like charging double for a gallon of gas that goes into a Cadillac as opposed to a Honda Civic
2
"What this country needs is a good 25¢ cigar" and more monopolies.
9
The concerns over monopolies and their impact on national security are well taken. But, I'm surprised no one has taken the side of QCOM investors. They pay more than twice the dividend yield of BCOM; I suspect that will not change if the merger succeeds. Regardless of the legal challenges, QCOM investors are bound to lose in this merger. BCOM needs to be paying a lot more for the intellectual property value of those patents, especially given the difference in dividends.
6
The principle of Free Markets demands competition between rivals. A business world dominated by a few huge companies is every bit as bad as having companies controlled by the government. Disagree? Explain that next time you wait two weeks to have your internet connection fixed by the fiber optic company or sit cramped in an airline seat for 4 hours.
The purpose of mergers is to enhance profitability and income for shareholders and executives. Improved efficiency? Yes if you mean that laying off many employees (as Broadcom did in its previous merger) to cut costs is efficiency, yes it improves efficiency
Competition generates jobs, innovation, diversity, and customer oriented business. Mergers swallow up corporate money that might otherwise be invested in expansion and more jobs and send it into the pockets of people who are already rich.
Will the merger be approved? Of course, the appropriate agencies in the US government are already dominated by people installed by Republicans who have never met a merger they didn't love.
The proposed merger is
29
...an unabashed and unsurprising GOP assault on the affordability of goods and the intelligence of Americans.
...an attack on the free market by the greatest proponents of a (non-)free (cartel) market.
...a blatant boast of wealth in a world where numerous people in San Francisco and beyond can't even afford a home.
...the last thing we need in an expensive computing-hardware business where Intel and AMD are the only realistic CPU competitors on the desktop.
...hopefully never to happen.
(I know you didn't mean to let that sentence dangle, but boy are there so many ways to describe that hideous merger!)
6
Is it any surprise we pay too much for low quality products when we constantly allow anticompetitive mergers
12