Qualcomm's track record on releasing and delivering documentation is among the worst in industry. If you are not a big buyer they vetted, they won't even answer your emails or send you the NDA. And after NXP bought Freescale, previously available documents went missing. So, all care must be taken.

I guess it's time to go an have another look at that NXP chip I just qualified

I'd be willing to help download this data if there was an collaborative organized attempt to it.

That's kind of funny because I've had some bad experiences with NXP when it comes to documentation for some specific chips. Although, NXP does provide a lot of documentation related to technologies in general. That stuff is easily available.

So NXP started its independent life deeply in the red numbers. Doesn't seem nice, does it? People were wondering whether the thing was just gonna be chopped up, sold on, and half the people fired.

Instead, however, people had to be much more scrappy than before. The new bosses weren't tech geeks but money sharks. Don't do things that don't have a clear path to profit. Don't waste time. Don't tolerate people wasting their time. Of course, this seems entirely obvious to all of HN, but anyone reading this familiar with Philips culture knows that things aren't always that way. Philips and NXP had (have) plenty of people who were rightfully referred to as furniture. They were there for decades, same desk same chair, and nobody really know what exactly they were doing. Somebody, somewhere, just kept paying the salary.

NXP's new need to get back into the black numbers was truly transformative for the company. Sure, it's still a bigcorp with all the quirks you'd expect, but they came a long way.

I'd not have predicted a Freescale-level purchase 10 years ago, and I definitely would not have predicted a $38B valuation. That's more than Philips' current market cap ($26B) and NXP was spun out because it was a loss leader that they couldn't turn around.

Well done, folks! As a fellow Eindhovener, I can't help but be a bit proud. Too bad you didn't buy Qualcomm instead but you can't have it all I guess!

When reading financial textbooks they talk about how this happens in the last stages of the business cycles, because it makes sense at those points : economy steadily worsening, but only slightly (easy to mask on company results, so companies appear attractive, but management knows they will be significantly less so in a year's time or so), combined, especially today, with the massive availability of cheap credit, and the idea that "rates will be lower for longer" (history, of course, teaches us they won't).

The purpose here has to be to conquer more of the market by limiting options and moving towards more consolidation.

I suppose maybe Marvell could catch up and wind up in more phones but they're already the bargain basement chip that winds up in cheap junk tablets. They'd have a long way to go.

Intel could also make a sudden change of course and enter the market. Their foray into tablets didn't work out well for them (I own several Intel Android tablets) but at least their performance was on par with the competition at the time.

There's also the Kirrin line that are owned by Huawei [3] and used in their newer phones.

1. http://www.mediatek.com/

2. http://www.sonymobile.com/gb/products/phones/xperia-xa/#spec...

3. https://www.cnet.com/news/huawei-unveils-blazing-fast-kirrin...

Which matters more is, that NXP and Freescale (now part of NXP) are strong in automotive, which is not so much niche you think it is. While there is a smartphone comparable processor in the head unit, it is surrounded by about 40 to 60 Cortex-Mx processors and comparable.

Then think about the growing market of IoT, which also benefit from those automotive Coretx-Mx processors and their cheap prices.

The smartphone market is done and settled, with small improvements. But the IoT market is the one which will be disruptive.

NXP really had no Cortex-A solutions before acquiring Freescale, and Freescale's i.MX series hasn't been in a phone for years, if at all. They did have some early wins in mobile books, but not much more.

NXP is now targeting the i.MX line for automotive HMI/IVI use. The automotive-class chip domain has always been a specialty of NXP (nee Freescale nee Motorola Automotive nee Motorola Semiconductor)

But I think NFC chipsets are noise in this acquisition, I think this is all about QCOM missing the boat on automotive and buying their way into this market via NXP.

The real loser here is Intel who really doesn't have a compelling automotive story (aside from maybe Altera) and risks loosing to QCOM in handsets AND automotive.

Automotive isn't just about the application processor showing rear-camera video and 3D maps, there are a lot of other pieces needed and Moto/Freescale has had that market share for a very long time (at least with the American automakers).

Buying NXPI (and its many technologies) gives QCOM an escape path to diversify away from a maturing mobile handset market, with many foreign manufacturers in countries with a different view on IP.

I agree. Competetive reasoning aside this would leave ST Micro as the last wholly European player in that market (and NXP already is the last major one in the EU, ST being based in Switzerland). In theory Infineon could re-enter the mobile processor and memory market, but I think they left that turf for good, 10 years ago.

So I think EU authorities might have a word in this.

		+----------------------------+-------------+-------------+----------------------+
		|                            | Fiscal 2015 | Fiscal 2014 | Year-OverYear Change |
		+----------------------------+-------------+-------------+----------------------+
		| Revenues                   | $25.3B      | $26.5B      | (5%)                 |
		+----------------------------+-------------+-------------+----------------------+
		| Operating income           | $5.8B       | $7.6B       | (23%)                |
		+----------------------------+-------------+-------------+----------------------+
		| Net income                 | $5.3B       | $8.0B       | (34%)                |
		+----------------------------+-------------+-------------+----------------------+
		| Diluted earnings per share | $3.22       | $4.65       | (31%)                |
		+----------------------------+-------------+-------------+----------------------+
		| Operating cash flow        | $5.5B       | $8.9B       | (38%)                |
		+----------------------------+-------------+-------------+----------------------+

I'm glad Intel, HiSilion, Rockchip, Allwinner, Spreadtrum, and MediaTek are being competitive.

Did some of their key patents expire or something? Or maybe we've hit "peak phone/tablet"? Haha

If their margin went down because of massive advertising/discounts yet they still lost 5% of revenue, that would be worrying. But we can't tell from the table alone.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/qualcomm-settles-china-probe-142...

followed by 'voluntary' investments and 'partnerships'. Intel faced similar fate and was forced to open fab and inject almost two billion into chinese consortium Spreadtrum.

Gosh...the entire company has more money than some countries.

[1] http://www.principlesofaccounting.com/chapter-1/accounting-e...

NXP subsidiary Freescale was originally the semiconductor division of Motorola, which developed the first ever commercial high-power transistor, supplied much of the computing technology to the Apollo program, and developed the MC6800 and MC68000 processors that helped spark the modern computing, gaming and consumer electronics industries.

Quite a legacy Qualcomm is aquiring.

NXP was originally Philips

They merged on 2015

As a layman, I'm surprised a company can simply raise more than a third of their market cap. At this level, isn't debt almost an investment in the company? If revenue falters, how can the lenders make sure they're made whole?

A major reason to do it is that in the US debt is massive tax advantaged compared to things like stock, and a major reason for entities to lend out money for something like this is how poorly other less risky vehicles are paying in this era of financial repression (http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=financial-repression or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_repression).

And it's very common for a company with a great cash cow to bankrupt themselves by going out of their area(s) of core competence ... which this acquisition might be a doubling down on. I.e. isn't Qualcomm fabless, while NXP has 8 sites according to this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...

  "they don't reveal all the details of achieving good power consumption in their patents"

Patents are essentially an award of a short-term monopoly, as recompense for publicly disclosing an invention. If the invention is not sufficiently explained, then it's merely a trade secret, and can be copied without challenge.

I think this is pretty clearly a consequence of dirt cheap debt, which may lead to another economy crisis in 5-10 years, because not all of these multi-tens of billions of dollars debt deals for acquisitions are going to be successful, and when they'll crash, they'll crash hard.

How does management successfully integrate these merger of mergers?

Don't forget about HiSilion, Rockchip, Allwinner, Spreadtrum, and MediaTek.

The ones you listed are giving Qualcomm a run for its' money in mobile space, but automotive is a tough one to get into. Nvidia and especially Freescale/NXP already have automotive market share (and investment in the space)

They completely ruined Atheros wifi chips for instance. Pre-buyout they had the best featureset, and even open source firmware. Now they have a massive closed firmware driverlike-blob and you can't even set your MAC address. Pathetic.

If this happened, AMD wouldn't be able to make x86 and Intel wouldn't be able to make x86_64 anymore. [1]

Also Intel is very very keen to have AMD continue existing and manufacturing x86 CPUs because if they don't, the antitrust boffins will come after Intel.

[1] www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-clarifies-cross-license-with-intel-change-of-control-terminates-agreement-for-both

At the close of the 19th century, the Jules Verne novels occasionally featured an 'arms race' for the biggest possible cannon.

Then in the 20th they just slapped smaller ordnance on tanks and planes. Mobile platforms ...