Cypress Semiconductor acquires Broadcom's IoT chip business (CY)

REUTERS/Toru Hanai

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence IoT Industry Insider subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.

Cypress Semiconductor announced that it will acquire Broadcom Corporation's full portfolio of IoT products for $550 million.

Under the deal, Cypress will acquire Broadcom's IoT products and intellectual property for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Zigbee connectivity. Cypress will also get Broadcom's WICED platform and SDK for developers.

The deal will combine Broadcom's developer tools and connectivity technologies for IoT devices with Cypress' own programmable system-on-a-chip (SoC) products that provide memory, computing, and graphics processing for low-power devices.

Previously, Cypress could only combine its SoC products with generic connectivity radios, but now it can combine those SoC products with radio chips specifically designed to provide low-power connectivity for IoT devices. This means that Cypress will be able to offer a full portfolio of computing, memory, graphics processing, wireless connectivity, and developer tools for building connected IoT devices.

Cypress said in a statement that this combination should help it grow its hardware business for the industrial and automotive markets. Broadcom's IoT business generated $189 million over the past 12 months, according to the announcement. Broadcom said it was leaving the IoT market to focus on its wireless technologies for other device markets including mobile devices, laptops, TV set-top boxes and wireless access devices like routers.

Every subscriber to the BI Intelligence IoT Industry Insider newsletter received this story first thing in the morning, along with other insightful and informative content. To learn more and subscribe, please click here.