Renesas to acquire Nokia's wireless modem business
06 July 2010
The two companies are set to form a strategic business alliance for modem technology development.
Renesas Electronics and Nokia have announced that they are deepening their collaboration by forming a business alliance to develop modem technologies for HSPA+/LTE (Evolved High-Speed Packet Access / Long-Term Evolution) and its evolution.
As part of this alliance, the companies have entered into an agreement whereby Renesas Electronics is to acquire Nokia's wireless modem business for approximately US$200 million. It is planned that the alliance will be enhanced by long-term joint research co-operation on future radio technologies.
The planned transfer of Nokia's wireless modem business enables Renesas Electronics to maximise the value of Nokia's technology assets and engineering expertise in delivering advanced mobile platform solutions to the market by combining them with Renesas Electronics' multimedia processing and RF technologies. Together with Renesas' line-up of application processors, RF transceiver ICs, high power amplifiers, and power management devices, the wireless modem technologies enable Renesas to deliver a complete mobile platform solution to the market.
The wireless modem business to be transferred includes Nokia's wireless modem technologies for LTE, HSPA and GSM standards, which have been used for billions of handsets in the global market over the years. Furthermore, Nokia transfers Renesas Electronics certain patents related to the transferred technology asset. The planned transfer would also include approximately 1100 Nokia R&D professionals; the majority of whom are located in Finland, India, the UK and Denmark.
"The agreement with Nokia demonstrates our long-standing commitment to shape the future of advanced mobile platforms and will serve as an important step for us to become a leading mobile platform vendor in the global market. Our collaboration with Nokia will enable consumers to enjoy true mobile cloud computing experiences through our advanced high-speed mobile devices," said Yasushi Akao, President of Renesas Electronics Corporation. "In line with our ongoing efforts to strengthen our business structure, the transferring wireless modem technology and the innovation power and expertise of Nokia's employees will perfectly complement our core competences and serve as the key driving forces in growing our mobile business in the global market."
Renesas Electronics has licensed the Nokia modem since 2009 and the two companies have been working together to develop an industry-leading HSPA+/LTE platform.
In order to implement the planned business transfer, Nokia will start the appropriate personnel consultation process with its personnel representatives according to each applicable jurisdiction's labour law requirements. The transfer is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, and is estimated to take place during the fourth quarter of 2010.
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