What are the mergers of the top ten M&A events in the Internet of Things in 2016?

September 03, 2021

2016 is getting closer to the end. In the past year, although the popularity of the Internet of Things is not as good as in the past few years, the capital at home and abroad is still eagerly awaiting. The upstream chip manufacturers are consolidating, and downstream terminal manufacturers are also beginning to “crowd for warmth”. At the end of 2016, we sorted out 10 M&A events (in timeline) that were closely related to the Internet of Things in the past year.

Sony acquires Altair Semiconductor (Altair Semiconductor)

Time: January 2016, amount: $212 million

Sony acquires Altair Semiconductor (Australian Semiconductor)

In January 2016, Sony Corporation of Japan announced the acquisition of Israeli communications semiconductor supplier Altair Semiconductor (Altair Semiconductor) for US$212 million.

Founded in 1946, Sony Corporation of Japan is a well-known large-scale multinational group with a pivotal position in the fields of audiovisual, video games, electronic products and information technology.

Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Israel, Altair is the world's leading provider of single-mode 4G LTE solutions for consumer electronics products such as smart homes, smart cities, and electric vehicles. Unlike other 4G chips, the company's products only support 4G single mode and do not support 3G, which allows electronic devices to access the Internet at very low cost, while also having very low power consumption. Its products have been applied in routers, tablets, Chromebooks, mobile hotspot devices, USB adapters, M2M memory cards and many other applications.

Shlomo Gradman, president of the Israel High-Tech Forum, expressed his optimism about the acquisition, which he said was a win-win deal. Sony can take the opportunity to enter new markets such as the Internet of Things, and Israel can also become a model for a few large multinational groups in Japan through technology exports, setting an example for other companies. Some telecom experts said that the 4G/LTE communication standard is a hot technology in the field of data communication and Internet of Things. It will have huge market potential in the future. The acquisition of Altair reflects the Sony Group's concern for the Internet of Things market.

Microchip (Microcore) Acquires Atmel

Time: January 2016, amount: $3.56 billion

Microchip (Microcore) acquires Atmel

In January 2016, US chipmaker Microchip announced the acquisition of its peer Atmel for $3.56 billion.

Founded in 1989, Microchip is headquartered in Arizona, USA. Its main business is to produce various types of MCU micro-control chips, as well as EEPROM, SRAM and other types of memory chips, radio frequency and power management chips, as well as USB, LoRa. Communication interface chip including technologies such as ZigBee and Ethernet.

Founded in 1984, Atmel is headquartered in California, USA. Its main business is the production of various types of MCU micro-control chips. Its MCU products include 8051, AVR and ARM, in the consumer electronics market, computer Internet and industry. The defense and automotive industries are widely used. In addition, in addition to the MCU, Atmel also produces other chips such as RF, memory and WiFi, which basically coincide with Microchip's product categories.

Industry analysts believe that the pressure of profits has forced the entire semiconductor industry to set off a wave of mergers. Microchip's acquisition of Atmel is only one of them. In addition, since the two companies' main business is MCU micro-control chip, through the acquisition of Atmel, Microchip has rapidly climbed to the third place in the global MCU market (the first and second are Renesas and NXP respectively). This will have a profound impact on the overall MCU market structure, and because the MCU and IoT hardware are closely related, this impact is likely to touch the Internet of Things.

It is worth mentioning that in order to agree to Microchip's M&A agreement, Atmel must first terminate the agreement with Deutsche Dialog and pay a liquidated damages of approximately US$137 million because Microchip's acquisition conditions are more favorable.

Cisco acquires Jasper

Time: February 2016, amount: $1.4 billion

Cisco acquires Jasper

In February 2016, US network solution provider Cisco announced that it would acquire IoT startup Jasper for $1.4 billion in cash.

Cisco is the world's leading provider of Internet solutions, founded in 1984 and headquartered in California, USA.

Jasper was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Jasper's main business is to connect hardware devices such as cars, jet engines and even pacemakers through the Internet of Things, and has developed a fully functional software service platform to monitor the status of these devices. Its business scope includes transportation fleet monitoring, industrial control and other sensor network management, and is one of the most well-known startups engaged in the Internet of Things business.

According to industry analysts, Jasper not only provides Cisco with a highly connected customer base, but also has a highly developed IoT platform, which greatly enriches the Cisco Group's layout in the IoT industry. At the same time, the acquisition may also be included in one of the largest M&A cases involving the Internet of Things.

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