A summary of major semiconductor mergers and acquisitions around the world. Who will be the next prey?

Date: 2015.9.20

Acquisition method: Total amount of $4.6 billion, including: cash, $2.1 billion in debt and approximately 49 million Dialog American Depositary Shares

Purpose of acquisition: To develop automotive chip and IoT markets

Expected benefits: Through the acquisition, the new company's total annual revenue is expected to reach US$2.7 billion, and annual costs are expected to save US$150 million within two years.

Acquisition of Broadcom (the largest acquisition in the semiconductor industry to date)

Date: 2015.5.28

Transaction value: $37 billion

Acquisition of Emulex

Date: 2015.3.2

Transaction value: US$606 million

Acquired Offspark (IoT security technology provider)

Date: 2015.2.12

Transaction amount: Undisclosed

Purpose: To make mbed, launched in 2013, a unified code base, targeting security issues that are gaining traction in the Internet of Things (IoT).

Will acquire Marvell's mobile phone chip business (not confirmed yet)

Date: 2015.1

Acquired Oris through share swap to enter driver IC business

Date: 2015.1.2

Acquired Altera (FPGA manufacturer)

Date: 2015.5.29

Transaction value: US$15 billion

Acquired Lantiq, a leading provider of broadband access and home networking technologies

Date: 2015.2.2

Transaction amount: Undisclosed

Acquired International Rectifier (US power management chip manufacturer)

Date: 2015.1.13

Transaction value: US$3 billion

Purpose: To reduce operating costs, increase investment utilization of 300mm wafer production plants such as Dresden, and increase Infineon's market share in Asia outside the United States and South Korea.

Acquired Silicon Image

Date: 2015.1.27

Transaction value: US$600 million

Acquired Micrel (analog/mixed signal chip company)

Date: 2015.5.18

Transaction value: US$839 million

Acquisition of Vitesse

Date: 2015.3.18

Transaction value: US$389 million

Merged with Freescale

Date: 2015.3

Deal value: $40 billion

Acquired Cortina Access (American high-end network processing chip manufacturer)

Date: 2015.2.6

Transaction value: $49.7 million

Purpose: It is expected to become one of the powerful tools for attacking telecom operators and the Internet of Things market in the future.

Acquisition of Bluegiga

Date: 2015.2.4

Transaction amount: Undisclosed

Date: 2015.1

Date: 2015.1.20

Transaction amount: more than 10 million US dollars

Date: February 10, 2014

Transaction amount: Undisclosed

Cadence announced the acquisition of Forte Design Systems, a supplier of SystemC-based high-level synthesis (HLS) and algorithm IP, enabling Cadence to provide further SystemC standard flows for design and multi-language verification.

Date: February 11, 2014

Amount of the transaction: $394 million

Microchip announced that it will acquire Supertex, a high-voltage analog and mixed-signal chip manufacturer, for $394 million in cash to strengthen its supply to the medical, LED lighting, industrial and telecommunications industries.

Date: February 14, 2014

Transaction amount: Undisclosed

On February 14, Molecular Imprints Inc. (MII), a manufacturer of nano-patterning systems and solutions, announced that it had signed a contract to sell its semiconductor imprint lithography equipment business to Canon.

Date: February 18, 2014

Transaction amount: Undisclosed

MediaTek announced that it has entered into a simplified merger with its parent company Ralink Technology. A simplified merger means that when a parent company owns at least 90% of all sold shares of a subsidiary, it can directly merge the subsidiary with the consent of the parent company's board of directors.

Date: April 8, 2014

Transaction amount: Undisclosed

The board of directors of Duntech approved the acquisition of domestic driver IC manufacturer Asus through a share swap. Earlier, the market reported that Chinese panel manufacturers BOE and Synaptics were interested in acquiring Asus, but Duntech was the winner in the end.

Date: April 22, 2014

Transaction amount: Undisclosed

Freescale has signed an agreement to purchase Mindspeed's ARM processor business from MACOM. Its Comcerto CPE communications processor business includes a series of ARM-based multi-core embedded processors and related software.

Date: April 29, 2014

Transaction amount: 6.752 billion

Exar announced the acquisition of analog IC manufacturer IML, which has the P-Gamma chip favored by Apple and has been adopted by Apple's tablet computer iPad many times. The company currently has more than 4 billion yuan in cash on its account.

Date: May 23, 2014

Transaction amount: 300 million

Microchip publicly acquired Taiwan's Bluetooth chip manufacturer, Innochip. Innochip's major shareholder, Realtek, became the big winner of this acquisition, with an estimated profit of about NT$830 million.

Date: May 30, 2014

Transaction amount: 450 million

Seagate announced plans to spend $450 million to acquire the LSI flash memory division from Avago to improve the performance of its SSD products and acquire other related technologies. This deal makes Seagate the world's second largest PCIe flash memory controller developer.

Date: June 10, 2014

Transaction amount: Undisclosed

Austrian Microelectronics has reached an agreement with AppliedSensor, a global leader in solid-state chemical gas sensing solutions, to acquire 100% of the equity of AppliedSensor in cash.

Date: June 12, 2014

Transaction amount: Undisclosed

Synaptics acquired Renesas SP Drivers, a Japanese chip maker that makes energy-efficient smartphones. Apple had also expressed interest in the latter, which is one of the world's largest producers of chips used to control small and medium-sized liquid crystal screens used in smartphones and tablets.

Date: June 13, 2014

Transaction amount: 400 million

ON Semiconductor paid $400 million to acquire CMOS image sensor supplier Aptina Imaging; the automotive and industrial markets are also strategic focus areas for ON Semiconductor, and other application markets for Aptina products include cameras, mobile devices, computers and gaming platforms.

Date: June 17, 2014

Transaction amount: 1.1 billion

SanDisk has agreed to acquire flash memory device maker Fusion-io Inc (FIO) for $1.1 billion in cash. It will add data center flash memory products to help enterprise users better manage data loads at a lower cost.

Date: June 20, 2014

Transaction amount: 1.7 billion

TE Connectivity announced that it has reached an agreement with Measurement Specialties (MEAS) to acquire all of the latter's assets for $86 per share in cash, or approximately $1.7 billion. MEAS manufactures sensors covering pressure, vibration, thrust, temperature, humidity, ultrasonic, position and liquid.

Date: July 3, 2014

Transaction amount: Undisclosed

Qualcomm acquired CMOSPA supplier BlackSand to strengthen the competitiveness of RF360 solutions. BlackSand's main products are 3G CMOS power amplifiers that have both high power and low power consumption and can support multiple frequency bands.

Date: August 14, 2014

Transaction amount: 650 million

Intel recently announced that it will spend $650 million to acquire the network chip business of semiconductor equipment supplier Avago Technologies. Axxia's main business is to provide network and infrastructure products for wireless networks and enterprise gateways.

Date: August 14, 2014

Transaction amount: Undisclosed

u-blox, a leading wireless and positioning module and chip company, has announced that it has acquired Antcor, a developer of Wi-Fi baseband IP, to leverage its existing WiFi to create rugged communication solutions tailored for demanding environments.

Date: August 19, 2014

Transaction amount: Undisclosed

TE Connectivity announced that it has acquired the connector business of Xiamen Delixing Electric and Xiamen Xibashi. Delixing and Xibashi are private companies that produce heavy-duty connectors for industrial use.

Date: August 22, 2014

Transaction value: $40 per share ( 3 billion )

The integration complements Infineon’s expertise in power semiconductor technology and power switching systems, while expanding its expertise in compound semiconductors (GaN on Silicon) and driving stronger economies of scale in production. Strengthen distribution capabilities and increase regional market share.

Date: August 27, 2014

Transaction amount: 470 million

Murata announced the acquisition of Peregrine Semiconductor for US$471 million. The transaction enables Murata to acquire Peregrine's advanced RF-SOI process technology.

Date: October 10, 2014

Transaction amount: 202 million

Alcatel-Lucent announced that it has successfully completed a transaction with China Huaxin worth 202 million euros to divest its enterprise communications business unit and sell it to China Huaxin.

Date: October 16, 2014

Transaction amount: 2.5 billion

Qualcomm acquired British chipmaker CSR for $2.5 billion, successfully squeezing out its competitor Microchip Technology.

Date: October 30, 2014

Transaction amount: 200 million

MEMS and analog semiconductor company SiTime announced that it will spend $200 million in cash to acquire SiTime. This transaction will complement the two companies and provide solutions for the growing wearable, mobile and IoT markets.

Date: December 4, 2014

Transaction amount: 4 billion

The combined company will be: a global leader in microcontrollers and application-specific memories for embedded systems with sales of $2 billion, the world's number one in NOR Flash memory, and the world's leading SRAM memory company.