Transmeta for sale

The board of chip design company Transmeta is looking for a potential buyer for the entire company. A press release issued by the company explains this move primarily as a way to enhance value for its shareholders. The company experienced trouble at the beginning of this year with one of its major shareholders who was dissatisfied with the result of the patent dispute between Intel and Transmeta.

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Although the company negotiated a one-off payment of $150 million, as well as yearly payments of $20 million until 2013 with Intel, major shareholder Riley Investment Management LLC accused Transmeta's board of mismanagement and of neglecting its duty of care. Riley presented the rest of the shareholders with a takeover bid.

Transmeta has now announced that it has negotiated a further settlement of the patent dispute with Intel. As part of this settlement, the company expects Intel to pay a further $91.5 million before the end of the business quarter on September 30th – instead of the originally agreed instalments spread over five years. In a further non-exclusive agreement with Intel, Transmeta will grant Intel licences for various unspecified technologies.

Apart from Intel, Transmeta investors and licensees include AMD, Nvidia and NEC. In August 2008, graphics chip manufacturer Nvidia obtained licences to use Transmeta's power saving technologies. Despite its recently reduced losses, Transmeta has produced far from satisfactory business results, its turnover for the second quarter plunging from $9.3 million in 2007 to only $171,000. Another low-power processor specialist, Montalvo Systems, was acquired by Sun Microsystems earlier this year.

(jbe)