Today Analog Devices has announced that it will be acquiring Maxim Integrated in a transaction estimated at $21bn. The combined company value is said to end up being valued at $68bn, creating a significant player in the analog IC market.

Analog Devices are best known for their signal processing discrete ICs, such as amplifiers, ADCs and DACs, although their product portfolio extends to a very wide range of other designs.

Meanwhile Maxim Integrated is mostly known by their power management ICs as well as sensors. For example, they have been the main battery power management IC (PMIC) provider for Samsung mobile devices for the better part of the last decade (And until recent years, a lot of other phone-centric PMICs as well).

Although the two companies have some overlapping product segments which likely will see consolidation, the overall two business seem like they will be complementary to each other as they both specialize in different areas. Analog Devices in particular says that the transaction is meant to boost its market share in the automotive and data centre markets thanks to Maxim’s application specific products, while continuing to offer Analog Devices own broader market products.

In a market where we see a ton of consolidation and many vendors opting to vertically integrate their solutions, it becomes important to have a broader product portfolio in order to maintain leadership positions. The new consolidated Analog Devices and Maxim Integrated entity will have the breadth to compete against big players such as Texas Instruments.

Source: Analog Devices Press Release

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  • Oxygen12 - Monday, July 13, 2020 - link

    No editor on this one?

    "the main the main"

    and

    "The new consolidated Analog Devices and Maxim Integrated entity will have the breath to compete against big players such as Texas Instruments."

    "Breath"? Really?
  • drexnx - Monday, July 13, 2020 - link

    probably meant "breadth"
  • Ryan Smith - Monday, July 13, 2020 - link

    Right you are! Thanks!
  • Zingam - Monday, July 13, 2020 - link

    The grammar police got you arrested! You are dead! Game over!
  • GreenReaper - Monday, July 13, 2020 - link

    Breath of the Wired.
  • webdoctors - Monday, July 13, 2020 - link

    Wow, crazy big news. That's gonna really reduce the number of big players in the analog IC market. Wonder if regulators will signoff on it.
  • SarahKerrigan - Monday, July 13, 2020 - link

    Wonder if we'll see another layoff bloodbath at ADI like after Hittite was bought.
  • flgt - Monday, July 13, 2020 - link

    This is terrible news. I feel bad for anyone starting off their careers in engineering fields. I hope I can make it 10-15 more years. There's only going to be a few major companies left or you'll have to get on engineering welfare (DoD work). The only problem is the DoD will have to buy all it's technology from Asia. This is the white collar equivalent of all the steel mills in town shutting down.
  • Samus - Monday, July 13, 2020 - link

    Unless you are at a company like GE or Boeing (which is in of itself in a risky position right now) the broad engineering field never really guaranteed a long-term position at a single employer. Even the public sector, long considered a mainstay for job security, has very high turnover of engineering talent (I used to work at Argonne National Labs as an intern for 3 years while at University of Chicago for my EE) and everybody I knew there had moved around only a few years later, including my old boss who essentially built the department I worked in. That was a combination federally funded\education funded department so there were numerous grants to fall back on from both sides if funding came up short.

    The fact of the matter is engineers don't really 'like' to stay in one place. The mindset of an engineer is perpetual curiosity, and they will inherently get board at some point if they aren't able to flex their mind muscles on diverse projects.

    Which is why I said the exception were mega-engineering houses like GE and aerospace, because there is such a vast spectrum of engineering diversity that you could likely move around to different projects within your realm of expertise, instead of designing one type of thing over and over again for decades like you will at, say, Ford, as a materials engineer, electrical engineer, etc, where you have little freedom to make your job exciting.
  • flgt - Monday, July 13, 2020 - link

    That’s a good point but it’s still bad no matter how you look at it. If you’re a skilled IC designer looking to bounce around and get good work you’ve lost a lot of options the past few years. If your resume is so-so and you were just hoping for job security, then your services are no longer needed. We used to have a lot of great small companies in my area during the cellular boom. Everyone bounced around every few years and got great pay. It’s pretty much all gone and I’d say 90% of the EE’s in the area are now working for the taxpayer in one form or another. This pace of consolidation is not a good sign.

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