Electronics Weekly Electronics Design & Components Tech News
Taiwan’s IC design houses consolidating
The independent Taiwan design community is now under notice that it will have to cope with a powerful competitor or a new owner.
MediaTek already has a number of local chip companies under its belt, the most notable being MStar which was acquired last year.
Earlier this year it acquired Alpha Imaging for UAV chips and Chingis Technology for flash chips.
Now it is planning to use MStar to take over the analogue IC design company ILI Technology (Ilitek) for $115 million while it makes an $890 million bid for analogue IC designer Richtek under its own name.
According to Digitimes, the resultant merger could account for half Taiwan’s IC design revenues and will put the leading independent houses – Novatek Microelectronics, Himax Technologies, Realtek Semiconductor, FocalTech Systems, Raydium Semiconductor, Elan Microelectronics, Sitronix Technology and Silicon Motion Technology – under scrutiny as possible takeover targets.
Mediatek has already absorbed Andes Technology for MCUs, Goodix for touchscreen controller ICs, and mCube for MEMS.
