Perhaps indicative of the competitive nature of the wireless market, GlobeSpanVirata agreed late Tuesday to buy Intersils wireless operations for $365 million in cash and stock.
The deal places a sizeable premium on Intersils wireless business, which Intersil believes will generate $55 million for the second quarter of 2003, or about $270 million for the year.
Intersils product portfolio includes support for the 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g WiFi standards, and the companys expertise will now be added to GlobespanViratas line of DSL chipsets. Intersil, meanwhile, will focus on high-performance analog products.
Intersil competes with Texas Instruments, Atheros, as well as archrivals Broadcom and Intel Corp., which has begun integrating WiFi components into its PC core logic chipsets. Executives at SIS and Via Technologies have also stated that they have plans to follow suit, threatening to push WiFi into commodity status.
For the whole story, check out the ExtremeTech article.