One can only guess why this was felt to be necessary, but it was probably there was probably a threat to the future of the chip and Simga thought it had to act to protect its "interests". The death of the Foveon founder was probably the participating event. No price was mentioned.
Ultimately, I think this was not a wise business move for Sigma, based on what I would deduce the situation at Foveon to be -- either they lose their investment, which I suspect was minimal, or they are locked-in to a high-priced (probably few other potential buyers now, so small volume), non-competitive chip (unless they are ready to double resolution over night) or at best, tiny niche market chip.
Sorry, to be so negative. I'm prepared for the flames that I'm sure will come from some of the fan boys.
I'm not so sure it's a bad thing. I guess it all depends on the price. If Foveon was about to fold, Sigma might have got a bargain price, secured a source for it's sensors, and bought it's way into a whole new segment of digital camera technology. Regardless of whether you like the Foveon chips, Sigma's line of digital cameras are pretty dependant on them at this point, and given that these chips are significantly different than sensors from other manufacturers, I suspect that the costs of 'retooling' the line to use a different sensor might be relatively significant. So short term it seems to be a reasonable move. Longer term, it remains to be seen if Sigma is able to commit the resources needed to improve the Foveon, or if it condemns Sigma to a line of sensors that will always be significantly behind those of the other manufacturers.
1. The Foveon founder (Carver Mead) is still alive and kicking.
2. Dick Merrill recently passed away---he was (in Carver Mead's words) the "best engineer I ever met" (in regards to chip design). He was one of Foveons principle scientists, and the industry mourns his loss.
My guesses are that Foveon had been spending quite a bit of resources for some time on camera phone chips (and lens combos). I don't run the company, but I would have thought that would be a very tough market to get penetration in, and make a buck.
Sigma is a privately held family-run company. They have pretty deep pockets, and seem committed to the camera market for the long haul. So I actually think that this is a good thing overall---certainly for Foveon. They should be able to focus in an area that we're all interested in (larger and better dSLR chips). Dick Merrill's first X3 prototype chips were "48 MP" (in SD14 parlance) chips (4K x 4K), which I bet were stuck in a Hassy. From what I understand, there's not much in the way of scaling the chips larger. Getting higher pixel densitites is also possible. With time and patience and funding---there's no reason that they wouldn't be able to reach densities approaching the current CFA chips.
The associated processing/buffering is an issue as well---and I'm hoping that Sigma sees fit to address it.
So the purchase secures Sigma's uniqueness with regards to a camera platform. It gives them a more direct path to dictate requirements (instead of influencing a supplier), and it allows them to restructure a very promising company to meet a very specific set of goals. And hey---they don't have to worry about the stock price either...
So at best---they hit it out of the park. At worse, they've made a bad investiment. I believe that this has been on the minds of the Sigma management for years, however---so I doubt it's a rash move.
