Dialog Semiconductor gobbles Atmel for $4.6bn, with 'synergies' on the way

UK-based chipmaker Dialog Semiconductor is to acquire US chip firm Atmel for $4.6bn (£3bn) in a cash and stocks deal. The acquisition will create a company with a combined value (annual revenues) of $2.5bn, or £1.6bn. In 2014, Dialog posted sales of $1.15bn (£740m), up 28 per cent on 2013; while Atmel's full-year results …

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, dear God

> Jalal Bagherli, Dialog chief exec, said the ... "new, enlarged company will be a diversified, high-growth market leader"

No disrespect to the company nor the logic or otherwise of the takeover but ... dear God .. 'diversified high-growth market leader"! Have the mid-1990's made a come-back while I was sleeping?

[Mage]

They didn't seem familar to me as a UK company

"On 10 February 2011, Dialog semiconductor announced that it had completed a transaction to acquire SiTel Semiconductor"

They indeed are not very British

Dialog Semiconductor originated from the European operations of International Microelectronic Products, Inc. – a Silicon Valley company founded in 1981. Then 1989 Dialog Semiconductor formed as part of Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (part of Daimler-Benz).

According to Wikipedia, which doesn't entirely make sense.

September 2009 – Relocates to new Swindon facility (from Germany?), hence the "UK" connection.

December 2012 – New Design Centers in Livorno, Italy and Istanbul, Turkey

July 2013 – Acquires iWatt Inc.

They seem to have an Edinburgh centre since 2007.

I guess the Ardunio folks will be nervous for a while.

[Will Godfrey]

Re: They didn't seem familar to me as a UK company

... Arduino. My first thought too.

The atmega series are highly successful, they surely won't mess that up. Would they?

Would they?

Hey, anybody there?

[ChrisC]

Re: They didn't seem familar to me as a UK company

Arduino may be the most public-facing use of the AVR family, but there are thousands upon thousands of other companies out there using AVRs in their own commercial products, so I'd say the likelihood of this sale having the slightest effect on AVR end users is somewhere in the region of zero. Maybe Dialog will start phasing out the Atmel brand and start slapping their own logo on the chips and datasheets (just as Atmel themselves have done in the past), otherwise I imagine it being business as usual.