- News
19 January 2018
Qualcomm’s acquisition of NXP authorized by EC and Korea Fair Trade Commission
© Semiconductor Today Magazine / Juno PublishiPicture: Disco’s DAL7440 KABRA laser saw.
Qualcomm Inc of San Diego, CA, USA says that the European Commission and the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) have authorized the acquisition by indirect subsidiary Qualcomm River Holdings B.V. of NXP Semiconductors N.V. of Eindhoven, The Netherlands. The acquisition has now received 8 of the 9 approvals around the world, with China remaining.
Qualcomm says that it cooperated with the Commission and the KFTC and agreed to all conditions required by the agencies to obtain their authorization. The firm committed to exclude certain near-field communication (NFC) patents from the proposed transaction and to ensure that NXP licenses those patents to third parties. Qualcomm also committed not to assert the NFC patents it will acquire from NXP and maintain interoperability between Qualcomm’s baseband chipsets and NXP’s NFC chips and rivals baseband chipsets and NFC chips. It will also continue to offer a license to MIFARE on terms commensurate with those offered by NXP currently.
“We are optimistic that China will expeditiously grant its clearance,” says Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf. “Acquiring NXP is complementary to Qualcomm’s global portfolio, providing tremendous scale in automotive, IoT [Internet of Things], security and networking and will greatly accelerate our ability to execute and create value in new and adjacent opportunities,” he believes.
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