If you can’t beat ’em, buy ’em?
Qualcomm, currently pushin its CMDA 450 solution hard in Europe for wireless broadband licences, has bought Flarion, inventor of the FLASH-OFDM technology which had just beaten CDMA 450 to a national license in Finland.
Qualcomm has paid $600 million for Flarion in cash and stock, and is in for a further $205 million in cash and stock depending on certain conditions being met. Completion of the acquisition, which is subject to regulatory approval and
other customary closing conditions, is expected later this year.
We’ll be speaking to participants from both sides soon to find out what the plans are, but until then, here’s some cut and pastes from the press release announcing the transaction:
“”With this acquisition, QUALCOMM will be in a stronger position to support advanced development in both CDMA and OFDMA technologies,” said Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, CEO of QUALCOMM. “The combination of Flarion and QUALCOMM’s
engineering resources greatly strengthens our position as a continued technology innovator and leader in the wireless industry. We believe CDMA will provide the most advanced, spectrally efficient wide area wireless networks for the foreseeable future, but with Flarion we can now more
effectively support operators who prefer an OFDMA or hybrid OFDM/CDMA track for differentiating their services.”
“This combination with QUALCOMM is ideal for Flarion as QUALCOMM has a proven history of bringing the most advanced technologies to market for large-scale deployments,” said Ray Dolan, chairman and CEO of Flarion. “The Flarion team is excited about becoming part of QUALCOMM and working hand in hand to bring the best solutions to the industry.”
“The name QUALCOMM is synonymous with excellence,” said Rajiv Laroia, founder and CTO of Flarion. “Their CDMA wireless technology is the basis of every major international standard. Both companies value the importance of innovation in solving technical challenges to bring the right solutions to our customers. The two companies have very similar cultures and the combination of the two will be positioned very well with respect to both CDMA and OFDMA wireless technologies.”
“With the transition to third-generation CDMA wireless services well underway, CDMA2000 and WCDMA continue to experience substantial growth in markets around the world,” said Steve Altman, president of QUALCOMM. “The acquisition of Flarion establishes QUALCOMM as a preeminent developer of emerging OFDMA technologies, enhances our internal OFDMA developments and, when combined with our existing portfolio, results in our owning an industry-leading OFDMA intellectual property portfolio.”
QUALCOMM will continue to focus on raising throughput and lowering cost of 3G CDMA networks with advances in receive diversity, interference cancellation, multi-carrier and speech compression. The introduction of VoIP on data-optimized RF carriers and the integration of wireless LAN and multicast technologies, such as OFDM-based FLO(TM) (Forward Link Only) technology, provide increased opportunities for operators to deliver voice, data and wireless multimedia applications to their subscribers using various
frequency bands and the air interface technologies best suited to the service offering. The addition of Flarion’s resources will further strengthen QUALCOMM’s position as a leader in designing and licensing OFDMA systems, components and products for operators interested in OFDMA.