On Monday, Marvell announced they were acquiring Kinoma. To the man on the street, that sounds more like the plot of a comic book and not the merging of some pretty serious players in the mobile industry, which is what it actually is. And they’ve got some ambitious plans, but I found myself questioning whether many end users will feel their effect.
Marvell is a player on the pre-OEM level, providing tech and chipsets to companies putting together devices like handsets, tablets, and e-readers. Kinoma, which I hadn’t heard of until today, is working on a sort of thin OS layer that goes on top of Android and a few other OSes, adding functionality and connectivity while keeping the footprint small and the compatibility level high. But could they be mistaken on where the platform is going?
