Apple buys a stake in Imagination Technology

APPLE CAN no longer hide the fact that it has acquired a stake in Imagination Technology, since the company blurted it out publicly yesterday.

The 3.6 percent stake is supposed to have set Apple back around £3.2 million. The company is expected to be involved in Imagination's PowerVR cores sector for graphics in mobile phones.

AppleInsider has been tracking the company's interest in PowerVR technology for some time and is now proud to confirm its suspicions in the share.

Back in April, AppleInsider reported that "the next generation of iPhone appears set to claim exclusive access to advanced graphics core and video decoding technology, thanks to a secret licensing deal between Apple, mobile graphics leader Imagination Technologies, and Samsung, the Iphone's ARM 'system on a chip' manufacturer."

More recently, in September of this year AppleInsider reported that an anonymous international electronics systems company had acquired a multi-year, multi-IP, multi-use licence agreement for its current and future portfolio of PowerVR mobile graphics components, including the next generation PowerVR SGX VXD video IP cores.

Soon after it became pretty obvious that the anonymous company was Apple, as Steve Jobs revealed that the PA Semi acquisition was related to building chips for the Ipod and Iphone mobile devices.

Apple is now a confirmed "licensee of Imagination's technology." µ