Acquisition Expected to Provide Agilent with 3G Solutions for Wireless, Hybrid PDA and Mobile Information Appliance Manufacturers
Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A) today signed an agreement to acquire all of the issued share capital of Sirius Communications NV, a leading developer of CDMA application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for the 3G wireless and satellite communications market. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Sirius, founded in 1996, is a privately held fabless semiconductor company with headquarters near Brussels, Belgium. It develops code division multiple access (CDMA) and W-CDMA baseband ASIC technology. Adding Sirius' solutions is expected to give Agilent a broad and flexible set of 3G solutions for wireless, hybrid personal digital assistant (PDA) and mobile information appliance manufacturers.
The acquisition of the issued share capital of Sirius, which currently has 19 employees, will provide Agilent with engineering talent and intellectual property, including several patents. The company focuses on developing high-performance, low-power, and highly flexible standards-based CDMA and GPS IP physical modem layer silicon solutions, peripherals and development tools. It designs highly specialized software-programmable telecom chips for use in cellular, non-cellular and satellite communications.
"Agilent has vast experience in designing large digital chips that perform flawlessly the first time. Our plan is to integrate Sirius' technology with Agilent's existing data processing capability, and then combine it with our RF integrated circuits to form a complete wireless PDA solution," said Steve Hoffmann, vice president and general manager of Agilent's Imaging Electronics Division. "We also plan to merge Agilent's CMOS digital camera sensors, optical navigation sensors and infrared transceivers to deliver a whole new generation of mobile information appliances."
Agilent's plans for Sirius include investment in and expansion of its present role into a powerful design center dedicated to creating key components for telecommunications devices and networks. Sirius will become part of Agilent's Semiconductor Products Group.
"Joining Agilent Technologies is an important step in leveraging and complementing Sirius' portfolio of flexible low-power W-CDMA and navigation baseband technology," said Lieven Philips, chief executive officer of Sirius. "Agilent has an excellent reputation for its know-how in CDMA and W-CDMA test-equipment, and first-class RF technology. Having Sirius' design team as its 3G design center located at the heart of Europe is expected to ensure that Agilent is at the leading edge of universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) developments."
This acquisition is subject to closing conditions.
About Sirius Communications NV
Sirius Communications NV was spun out of IMEC, Europe's largest independent microelectronic research institute, in 1996. The company's CDMA chip solutions implement Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum techniques and can function in a wide variety of CDMA telecommunications systems. Sirius licenses its CDMAx(TM) wideband transceiver intellectual property to component manufacturers and telecommunications companies. The company is headquartered near Brussels in Leuven, Belgium. More information about Sirius is available at siriuscomm.com
stockhouse.ca
OM |
