Bloomberg cited sources familiar with the matter as saying that Intel Corp is looking for buyers for its connected home chip unit. It’s a move that could change the future development pattern of the cable modem and gateway business in the chip industry.

This report appeared on the eve of Thanksgiving in the United States, and Intel has not commented on the report. Bloomberg said Intel has hired a financial consultant to sell the unit, which has annual sales of about $ 450 million, including WiFi and smart home products. In July this year, Intel sold its smartphone modem business to Apple for $ 1 billion. Now that Intel’s operation of the connected chip in the connected home sector does mean that Intel will give up all communications chip business and focus on computing and some storage product lines.

Home connectivity is a small part of Intel’s overall business-Intel reducing its $ 19.2 billion holdings in the third quarter of 2019 alone but this sale could shake cable TV’s already struggling consumer premises equipment (CPE) market. Operators such as Comcast have been emphasizing the purchase of gateways and other chip-powered broadband equipment from at least two vendors.  The sale of Intel’s home-connected devices will obviously change the fate of a key silicon supplier of cable television cables.

In August 2010, Intel acquired the cable modem product line of Texas Instruments, thereby making a significant inroad into the field of cable chips.

Broadcom is Intel’s main competitor in the wired CPE market, and the sale of this unit comes at an important time for the development of wired access networks. CableLabs, the US cable industry R & D laboratory, is providing the industry’s most important IP for widely deployed HFC networks.

It’s unclear who will be interested in acquiring Intel’s Home Connect Division, but recently the cable industry has been speculating that a new private entity may want to acquire these assets and compete with Broadcom’s strong market control. STMicroelectronics has become the third largest supplier of DOCSIS chipsets in recent years, but the company eventually withdrew its plans to chase the market.