A week ago, INTC agreed to buy MBLY, an Israeli company that makes cameras and car safety devices, for $15.3 billion in cash.  Its plan is to merge its existing auto components business with MBLY and have that company spearhead INTC’s entire Internet-of-Things effort to enter the auto market.

Why buy rather than build?

The main issue is time, I think.  Part of this is that the timetable for development of autonomous driving vehicles is accelerating.  More than that, however, and the chief reason for the acquisition, to my mind, is the way marketing to the big auto companies works.

Auto companies plan new models several years in advance.  If you want a component in, say, a 2020 model, you probably need to have already convinced an auto maker of its merits by late last year.  Also, unless a component maker has a unique technology, auto companies tend to move slowly.  They’ll initially buy a single component, or they’ll put a part in one car model, just to see how the part–and the supplier–perform.  If things work smoothly, it will consider expanding that part’s use and/or buying other parts from the supplier.

The result is that convincing a car company to risk of using a new supplier takes a long time.  Without MBLY, which already makes key auto components and has an auto-oriented sales force, I think it could easily be a half-decade before INTC would make any significant inroads into the auto market.  INTC probably doesn’t have that much time.

This is not, of course, to say that INTC will be wildly successful in the auto-related IoT.  Without MBLY, though, its chances for success would be considerably dimmer.