Qualcomm To Buy NXP Semiconductors in $47 Billion Deal (bloomberg.com) 40
Qualcomm, the largest maker of mobile-phone chips, will acquire NXP Semiconductors NV in a transaction valued at $47 billion, aiming to speed an expansion into new industries and reduce its dependence on the smartphone market. Bloomberg reports: San Diego-based Qualcomm agreed to pay $110 a share in cash for NXP, the biggest supplier of chips used in the automotive industry, or 11 percent more than Wednesday's close, the companies said in a statement Thursday. The deal will be funded with cash on hand as well as new debt. Chief Executive Officer Steve Mollenkopf is betting the deal, the largest in the chip industry's history, will accelerate his company's entry into the burgeoning market for electronics in cars. Eindhoven, Netherlands-based NXP is strong in that sector following its acquisition last year of Freescale Semiconductor Ltd. "It's no secret that we've been looking around," Mollenkopf said in an interview. "If you look at our growth strategy it's to grow into adjacent markets at the time that they are being disrupted by the technology of mobile."
Good idea. Andriod should diversify too (Score:1)
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That's derpy as hell, there is no connection at all between the things called "Android" and "Qualcomm."
If you're going to comment on that basis, you'd have to say words establishing a connection first.
The reason this is bad for android is actually that NXP makes a lot of ARM chips that are important to embedded devices, including ones that run... android! That's what makes your comment extra-derpy. Truly a sad day for android, but no, not because there is some "connection" between android and qualcomm but b
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That's derpy as hell, there is no connection at all between the things called "Android" and "Qualcomm."
OK, I'll bite on this. What new Android mobile phones can I buy that don't run on Qualcomm hardware?
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Nice one TED, you inserted extra words!
Just take out the extra words, go to newegg or any place that sells android-based devices, and search for "android" instead of "phone" and you'll see that in fact very few android devices have qualcomm anything in them. They do however quite often have CPUs from NXP.
The whole idea of a cell phone chip getting "crushed" in a benchmark is hilarious; newsflash, your cell phone is constrained by other things the IC it uses. As a tablet, lets be honest, qualcomm doesn't stu
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Nice one TED, you inserted extra words!
Yes, since you clearly were confused as to what I was getting at. Some of us call that a "clarification". I was indeed trying to talk about Android smartphones. You know, the thing I like to buy every 2 years or so when the old one goes obsolete. If those two words weren't enough of a difference, I'm quite capable of producing more.
Just take out the extra words, go to newegg or any place that sells android-based devices, and search for "android" instead of "phone"
Why would I do that, when the only Android devices I'm interested in buying as a consumer are smart phones?
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I don't care what you thought you were "getting at," what I responded to was what you said, because that is what you said.
If what you said didn't mean what you wanted to "get at," maybe try harder?
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What new Android mobile phones can I buy that don't run on Qualcomm hardware?
Galaxy S7, all non-US versions.
I live in the US, contracted to a US carrier. So for all practical purposes, no I can't buy that.
Autonomous Driving (Score:1)
NXP = NFC (Score:5, Informative)
NXP is also synonymous with NFC technology. This is entirely missed in both the summary and TFA it appears.
Re:NXP = NFC (Score:4, Funny)
So who specializes in AFC technology?
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Exactly. NXP is behind the infamous Mifare Classic NFC chips and the more recent and very popular DESFire EV1 chips.
Re: NXP = NFC (Score:1)
Eudora (Score:2)
Am I the only one who can never imagine Qualcomm as anything but the developer of Eudora? It just seems to bizarre to me that this company is now developing computer chips and all this other advanced stuff. Quite a big leap from a proprietary email client. (Yes, I've read about them, and know technically hat their history actually is, but that doesn't change my impression!)
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Sortof, but the Chinese generics are crushing most them in profits. The market forces that are driving the mergers are the same ones that are making things so much better for small and medium sized OEMs. Only the largest OEMs have anything to worry about. You could actually end up with a situation where the largest batch sizes actually more per unit than regular-large quantities! That could happen when there are only a couple mega-suppliers left that can even fill the big orders, but there are a zillion fac
Semiconductor market shrinking (Score:5, Interesting)
So the number of semiconductor companies continues to shrink. I noticed some time back how Intel's Numonyx has been a part of Micron, AMD's Spansion has been a part of Cypress, and now I read that Freescale had been gobbled by NXP, which now is eaten by Qualcomm.
All these companies might as well formally become design arms of real fabs, like TSMC, GSMC, Samsung, et al
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With that logic TSMC, GSMC, and Samsung should all bend the knee to the semiconductor equipment manufactures like ASML who make every piece of equipment on their production lines. ASML being another Dutch company....
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I thought the only US fabs that are still there are the legendary ones made by Intel.
Hardly. There are dozens of US domestic fabs that aren't part of Intel. A lot of the older ones specialize in the RF and power control ICs that are used in phones and all kinds of other rechargeable gear, because they require higher voltages and special features not supported by state-of-the-art fabs. There will always be at least one because chips for those F35's and such have to come from ... somewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants
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It's not really shrinking, it is maturing. Over the last few decades the semiconductor market has moved from a relatively large number of smaller disruptive companies to a relatively small number of larger streamlined companies. As an example, consider how many CPU architectures there were in the '80s and '90s. You had x86, 680x0, MIPS, Alpha, SPARC, PA-RISC, just to name a few. Now there is x86 (the modern version of it) and ARM.
You can also look at car companies in the first half of the 20th century. Linc
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Working in the industry it's been interesting to see what happens with all these acquisitions. It's NOT fun, however, when someone buys the company who happens to make a very unique part, then cans that whole product line, forcing you to redesign the product (which may or may not have a replacement part).
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I see another trend. The small companies with very helpful engineering teams and fantastic support are being gobbled up by companies who specialise in hiding behind NDAs.
I wonder if this is sustainable.
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Same here. I think this is a very bad trend, but unfortunately one where it will take some time to become obvious how bad.
The Freescale part is interesting (Score:1)
Famous US electronics firm managed straight into the ground by MBA holders with golden parachutes.
Motorola was a great US firm that created the 6800 series 8-bit MCUs that were in TONS of stuff. When the time came to go 16-bit, they leap-frogged and created the fantastic 32-bit 68K series with a wonderful instruction set that treated the entire address space the same and all data registers the same. Intel monkeyed with their 8080 to create the oddball 8086 and 8088 which became the base of the PC and all th
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IMO, Motorola mismanaged the PowerPC, which at one time looked like it could shoot up up front. They should have taken more ownership of IBM's OS/2, and participated in propping Be, which started off as a PowerPC box. Also, when Apple wanted more power saving CPUs, Motorola should have made that their first priority. Instead, they let that market go to Intel. Imagine if today's MBPs, Mac Pros and iPhones had all been based on PowerPC!
Instead, by just becoming an also ran ARM vendor, Freescale pretty m
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