Chipmaker Texas Instruments has announced it’s cutting 1,700 jobs as part of a business restructuring move. The company says it’s shifting its historical focus away from mobile chips because it’s become too resource and investment intensive to play in this space, blaming large customers “increasingly” developing their own custom chips. Apple and Samsung both develop their own mobile processors for products such as the iPhone and iPad, and the Galaxy SIII smartphone and Nexus 10 tablet.
Reuters reports that TI is expected to continue selling existing tablet and phone processors for products already using its chips, such as Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets, for as long as demand remains but that it will stop developing new chips. Last month there were rumours Amazon was in advanced talks to buy TI’s mobile chip business – however today’s restructuring indicates any talks that took place failed to come to an agreement.
