When the deal was announced in March 2015, the news took the electronics industry by surprise, but observers were not to know it was the catalyst for an outburst of 'merger mania'; since then, more than $100billion has been invested by electronics companies in buying either complementary organisations or competitors.
The NXP/Freescale deal comes under the former heading; the two companies, surprisingly, had little overlap in terms of technology, but shared one large market in common - automotive. In fact, the only real area where both companies had a presence large enough to capture the interest of the regulatory authorities was in RF power and NXP sold that part of its business to a Chinese investment group in July.
There's a couple of drivers to 'merger mania'. One is the low cost of money at the moment; the other is the fear that companies would be 'missing out' by not snapping up another business. What we don't know is how long 'merger mania' will remain in fashion - some have said the phase could last for another year or so.
If it does, the electronics industry could be looking very different by this time next year.
