Today Avago Technologies announced their acquisition of Broadcom for 17 billion dollars in cash and 20 billion dollars worth of Avago shares. This will leave Broadcom shareholders with 32% of the new combined company, and the combined 37 billion dollar value of the deal makes it one of the largest ever acquisitions in the history of the semiconductor industry.

Avago is a semiconductor company that produces a number of different products. They make PCIe switches for motherboards, and at one point were the owner of SandForce and their SSD controllers before they were sold to Seagate. Some of their products also cross over with Broadcom’s focus on the wireless industry, such as their power amplifiers for mobile radios. Broadcom is a company that we encounter frequently in the mobile space, as they make many different chips for WiFi and GNSS. If you have a smartphone, it’s very likely that something in it was made by Broadcom. They also produce many of the chips used in networking equipment for data centers.

As for why Avago would seek to acquire Broadcom, it could be that both Avago and Broadcom hope to combine their product portfolios in order to compete with Intel and Qualcomm in the areas of wired and wireless networking. The combined company after the acquisition will be based in Avago’s home of Singapore, and will continue to be called Broadcom.

Source: Reuters

Comments Locked

33 Comments

View All Comments

  • franzeal - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    You misspelled corporation.
  • nandnandnand - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    Even if they fix it the shame will always be in the URL
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    We here at the Ministry of Truth believe that no fact is above changing. Behold our ability to change even URLs themselves!

    (The URL slugs are somewhat arbitrary and can easily be fixed)
  • AndrewJacksonZA - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link

    I see what you did there, and what year you did it in. :-)
  • dsumanik - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link

    The real shame is that idiots like the original poster think correcting grammar makes them look cool... a smart person that will go absolutely nowhere in life, because they just don't get it.
  • ahtoh - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    I read cooperation
  • Brandon Chester - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    I apologize. I was using my iPad for writing and only had HTML support. It can be difficult to proof read text in that form.
  • ex_User - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link

    iPad is no good for proofreading? Sir, you'll be hearing from Apple lawyers very soon. :P
  • silverblue - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link

    You're typing it wrong.

    ;)
  • jjj - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    Something worth pointing out, If you exclude TSMC and the memory guys ( Samsung, Micron Hynix) this resulting entity will be the 3rd semi company in the world by revenue, after Intel and Qualcomm.
    Time for TI and some others to make big moves.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now