Qualcomm Buys NXP In Largest Ever Semiconductor Deal

Reuters has reported that Qualcomm will purchase NXP for $38 Billion in the largest semiconductor deal ever.

This deal was rumored last month in a deal worth about $30 Billion. Qualcomm’s name should be familiar to all Hackaday readers – they have an immense portfolio of mobile processors, automotive chips, and a ton of connectivity solutions for WiFi, Bluetooth, and every other bit of the EM spectrum. NXP should also be familiar for their hundreds of ARM devices, automotive devices, and Freescale’s entire portfolio.

The deal for $38 Billion is just a bit larger than the previous largest semiconductor deal, Avago’s purchase of Broadcom for $37 Billion.

This latest acquisition has followed acquisitions of ARM Holdings by Japan’s Softbank, On and Fairchild, Avago and Broadcom, NXP and Freescale, Microchip and Atmel, Intel and Altera, and a few dozen we’re forgetting right now. The good news is this immense industry consolidation won’t result in a single gigantic chip maker; there will probably be two or three gigantic chip companies in the future. If I may dredge up an observation from a Mergers and Acquisition post from this summer, this trend didn’t go well for Hughes, Fairchild, Convair, Douglas, McDonnell Douglas, North American, Grumman, Northrop, Northrop Grumman, Bell, Cessna, Schweizer or Sikorsky. It went very well for Lockheed, Boeing, and Textron.

30 thoughts on “Qualcomm Buys NXP In Largest Ever Semiconductor Deal

  1. Oh boy… this sounds exciting in all the wrong ways. Like when the well-intentioned professor says “Good news, everybody!”…

    Also NXP datasheets are usually the best on the whole dang Internet… at least to my eyes. (FWIW, I look at a lot of 74xx part ‘sheets, because I can’t memorize ’em. Head’s too small. Why those old things? I’m sort of stuck in the 80s ;) ) I hope we’re not seeing the end of that. Good datasheets are at least as important as being able to get the parts themselves. You can’t use it if you don’t know how, unless you blackbox — and blackboxing is only very rarely worth the time and effort.

      1. It has to happen. There is a lot of overlap between parts, so same dogs fighting for one bone, semiconductor fabs start with a $B and go up, so not enough profit unless you are fabless, the market is almost flat, This way, they can combine the best of both companies and dump the unprofitable. Life sucks for a while, then it gets better.

  2. the way i see it, either Qualcomm is going to see how NXP is making money by being more open about their parts and everyone wins or NXP is about to become very secretive like Qualcomm and everyone loses.

      1. I’m an happy person after spending 6 months developping a very complex and modular sensing system based on Atmega RFR2’s and after the Microchip merger the chips doubled price, and availability has a been a bit worse…

        Now about this one..
        Rip iMX family the only decent A series ARM’s with FULL datasheets…
        Wanna know what this chip does? Buy me 1 milion and sign a truck load of NDA’s.
        Oh its just a 74HC buffer, woppsie..

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