“We are pleased that both the EC and the Korean Fair Trade Commission have granted authorisation of the NXP acquisition and we are optimistic that China will expeditiously grant its clearance,” said Steve Mollenkopf, pictured, Qualcomm’s CEO. “Acquiring NXP is complementary to Qualcomm’s global portfolio, providing tremendous scale in automotive, IoT, security and networking and will greatly accelerate our ability to execute and create value in new and adjacent opportunities.”
As part of its agreement with the EC and Korea, Qualcomm has committed to exclude certain near-field communication (NFC) patents from the proposed transaction and to ensure that NXP licenses those patents to third parties. It also committed not to assert the NFC patents it will acquire from NXP and to maintain interoperability between Qualcomm’s baseband chipsets and NXP’s NFC chips and rivals baseband chipsets and NFC chips. The deal also requires Qualcomm to continue to offer a license to MIFARE on similar terms to those offered by NXP.
