Irish chipmaker Decawave has been acquired by Apple supplier Qorvo in a deal estimated to be worth about $400 million (€363 million).
Charlie Taylor for The Irish Times:
Founded in 2007 by Ciarán Connell and Michael McLaughlin, the Dublin-headquartered company provides ultra-wideband wireless technology through a low-power chip that can identify the specific location of any object indoors to within a few centimetres.
Qorvo is a North Carolina-headquartered maker of radio-frequency semiconductor components, that derives about a third of its annual revenue from Apple. The Nasdaq-listed company, which is seeing strong growth on the back of sales of 5G handsets, late on Wednesday announced third quarter revenue of $869 million (€789 million).
Ultra-wideband is a radio technology, like Wi-Fi, that is commonly described by techies as being like “bluetooth on steroids”. The technology, which is based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, provides superior location accuracy, both indoor and outdoor.
It also allows bidirectional communication of data between devices. Apple recently included the technology in its U1 chip, which is included in it latest smartphone, the iPhone 11.
MacDailyNews Note: In Qorvo’s financial results release yesterday, among “strategic highlights,” the company reported: “Signed, following the quarter, definitive agreements to acquire Decawave, a pioneer in ultra-wideband (UWB) technology and provider of UWB solutions for mobile, automotive and IoT applications; and Custom MMIC, a leading supplier of high-performance GaAs and GaN MMICs for defense and aerospace applications.”
