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Mergers and Acquistions News

Categories: Telecoms

January 5th 2011, 16:44PM

Qualcomm, a US wireless and telecommunications products maker, has secured entry into the chip production segment with the acquisition of Atheros, a wired local area connectivity firm, for $3.1 billion (£1.9 billion).

The firm said the acquisition is specifically intended to help it expand away from its traditional product offering of cellular devices, branching out into new growth opportunities.

Expected to complete in the first half of this year, Qualcomm forecasts a modest addition to earnings in 2012, the first full year that the two entities' will have been combined.

Dr Craig H Barratt, president and chief executive officer of Atheros, is expected to join Qualcomm as president of its networking and connectivity division.

"It is Qualcomm's strategy to continually integrate additional technologies into mobile devices to make them the primary way that people communicate, compute and access content," said Dr Paul E Jacobs, chairman and chief executive officer of Qualcomm.

"This acquisition is a natural extension of that strategy into other types of devices."

Talking to the Wall Street Journal about the deal, Stacy Ragson, an analyst at Bernstein, said: "Acquiring Atheros would fill a rather gaping hole in Qualcomm's 3G-only product portfolio and grant the company access to markets they currently miss."

Recently, Qualcomm sold some of its spectrum licence to AT&T, the US telephony giant, for $1.9 billion.ADNFCR-1833-ID-800324817-ADNFCR

 

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