This article is more than 1 year old

Qualcomm, TDK in US$3 billion joint venture to bake radio chipsets

Mobezilla bulks up on tech from baseband to antenna

Qualcomm is going to sling around US$1.2 billion into a joint venture with TDK to build radio chipsets.

According to Bloomberg and Reuters, the new outfit will be called RF360.

TDK's contribution to the roughly $3 billion business will be patents, manufacturing assets and design capabilities. The operation will be based in Singapore.

The move is a shift for blueprint-scribbler Qualcomm, which today gets most of its revenue from licensing its technology to others.

That strategy is under attack by monopoly regulators in the US, Asia and Europe because of the licensing model Qualcomm uses. Bulking up its capacity to bake its own silicon could give Qualcomm an alternative path if it has to abandon per-phone licensing.

Qualcomm's will hold 51 per cent of RF360, and has an option to acquire TDK's 49 per cent stake (held by subsidiary EPCOS) in the future.

TDK's big contribution to RF360 will be RF filters. Cristiano Amon, who heads Qualcomm's chip business, said that having devices all the way from baseband to the antenna would “provide significant growth” for the company.

The deal gets TDK out of the smartphone business, with The Wall Street Journal quoting CEO Takehiro Kamigama saying the proceeds will be invested in developing electronics for vehicles and robots. ®

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