STMicroelectronics buys NXP's wireless business

Friday 11th April 2008, 04:06:00 PM, written by Arun

STMicroelectronics and NXP have decided to 'merge' their wireless business by creating a joint venture. As Bolaji Ojo at EETimes.com points out though, it's really more of an acquisition. And a much smarter one than the proposed merger of ST, NXP and Infineon.

There isn't a lot for us to say on this subject, but it does feel like a very good strategic move for both companies. The synergies are obvious and the resulting company will be a very large player in the handheld business. Their positioning seems good and they should have a good shot at winning in the market place, but even if they failed to, I think it's very safe to say they wouldn't have done any better alone.

Interestingly, the merged company now has two baseband technologies at its disposal: that which ST bought from Nokia, and NXP's in-house programmable baseband technology (similar in some ways to Coresonic's, and to a lesser extend to Icera's). In terms of 3D cores, ST seems firmly in ATI's camp, so it seems likely the company will pump out more SoCs based on mini-Xenos in the coming years.

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corelogic ± st, nxp, wireless

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