The acquisition includes a sizeable number of Imagination Technologies employees located in the U.K, Sweden, India, and Taiwan, with around 15 percent being Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) specialists who will help to strengthen Nordic’s existing Bluetooth LE teams.
“This is a dream come true for Nordic Semiconductor and its customers, particularly in the smart home market,” commented Nordic CTO, Svein-Egil Nielsen. “As the global leader in short range Bluetooth wireless technology and the emerging leader in long-range cellular wireless IoT, there has long been a gap in between which our customers have been asking us to fill. And although it won’t happen overnight as this an IP acquisition rather than one that comes with Wi-Fi devices ready to sell, we will now be able to add Wi-Fi functionality to future generations of Nordic products."
“What’s just as exciting is the potential synergy between Nordic Semiconductor’s low power wireless heritage and the latest low power evolution of Wi-Fi that now allows battery-powered IoT devices,” added Nordic Director of Product Management, Kjetil Holstad. “We plan to now become an active member of the Wi-Fi Alliance and work with them, as we have and continue to do with multiple other major standards organisations and bodies, to maximize Wi-Fi’s low power wireless application potential using our decades of ultra-low power wireless expertise."
“Although Wi-Fi was born in the consumer sector, it is now rapidly gaining traction within the industrial IoT space,” explained Imagination Technologies CEO, Simon Beresford-Wylie. “With Imagination’s strong focus on graphics, vision, and AI processing, we feel our Wi-Fi IP division will thrive much better long-term within a company that has wireless connectivity at its centre and where it will become a major focus of strategic, technological, and commercial innovation and growth. I am extremely happy to have found such a good home for the technology and the team at Nordic Semiconductor: It’s a perfect match.
