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Infineon Technologies has inked a deal to acquire Cypress Semiconductor for $10 billion, the latest in a series of acquisitions of connectivity chip suppliers in the last few months.
Last week, NXP announced it was acquiring Marvell’s WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity assets for $1.76 billion. And in March, Nvidia said it was acquiring networking IC vendor Mellanox Technologies for $6.9 billion.
The common thread appears to be connectivity. Hassane El-Khoury, Cypress CEO, said in an interview recently that its WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity chips for automotive and IoT could be attractive for potential acquirers, especially in the light of ON Semiconductor’s acquisition of WiFi chip vendor Quantenna Communications for just over $1 billion in cash. Based on this, it seems that Cypress was certainly actively looking for suitors.
Infineon CEO Reinhard Ploss
El-Khoury seemed to reinforce the point in today’s statement, saying that Cypress was excited to join forces with Infineon "to capitalize on the multi-billion dollar opportunities from the massive rise in connectivity and computing requirements of the next technology waves." The companies are clearly targeting connectivity, saying the combination of Infineon’s security expertise and Cypress’s connectivity know-how will accelerate entry into new IoT applications in industrial and consumer segments.
NXP and Marvell
Similarly, NXP’s acquisition of Marvell’s wireless connectivity last week is intended to bolster the former’s push into connectivity. NXP said the acquisition enables it to offer customers a full range of wireless connectivity solutions including WiFi 4, 5, 6 and Bluetooth/ BLE combo along with its flagship edge computing platforms including I.MX, Layerscape, Kinetis, LPC and the newly introduced RT crossover processors to provide turnkey solutions for industrial & IoT, automotive and communication infrastructure markets.
The NXP acquisition includes approximately 550 people worldwide, and NXP expects the creation of new revenue opportunities in its target end markets. With approximately $300 million in revenue in Marvell’s fiscal 2019, NXP anticipates revenue associated with the acquired assets to double by 2022.
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About the author: Nitin Dahad is a European correspondent for EE Times.
