Maxim acquired two MCU lines of Zilog to strengthen its SOC portfolio

Maxim Integrated Products has acquired the Wireless Control and Secured Transaction product lines from Zilog. Maxim expects the acquisition of these product lines will be accretive to earnings and cash flow in its fiscal year 2009 and later. Generally Maxim popular products are more of analog and interface semiconductor devices, with this acquisition, which can be termed as excellent strategy, Maxim can now make SOC class semiconductor devices.

Zilog's wireless control product line is jointly purchased by Maxim and Universal Electronics Incorporated(UEI). Maxim purchased the semiconductor portion of the Wireless Control product line from Zilog, which consists of the microcontroller semiconductor chip business and supporting intellectual property. Maxim intends to combine the Zilog wireless microcontroller product line with its own unique, ultra-low power Infrared (IR) microcontroller family. UEI purchased the software portion of Zilog's Wireless Control product line, which consists of its patents, universal remote database and software, and related assets. The Maxim's hardware and universal's software is targeted at making feature rich remote controls.

The other product line acquired by Maxim is Zilog's Secure Transaction product line, which features the Zatara 32-bit ARM-based microcontroller family of high performance ARM System-on-Chips (SoCs) used in PCI (Payment Card Industry) payment terminals.

"Maxim's purchase of the Secure Transaction business is consistent with our strategy to strengthen our position in the POS (point of sale) and ATM markets," said Chris Neil, Division Vice President of Maxim. "This acquisition allows us to further leverage the application and software expertise recently added by our purchase of Innova Card to create the highest performance, fully integrated SoCs and most complete open software platform for financial transaction terminal markets."