To enter the mobile TV market as well as strengthen its presence in the Asian region, Analog Devices has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Integrant Technologies, Inc. of Seoul, South Korea. Under the terms of the definitive stock purchase agreement, ADI expects to pay approximately $127 million in cash at the closing in exchange for all of the outstanding shares of Integrant. The deal is expected to close in 60 to 90 days, following the satisfaction of regulatory requirements and other customary closing conditions. According to ADI, this acquisition is expected to increase its revenue by approximately 1% of sales in each of the next few quarters.

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A fabless innovator in low-cost, low-power CMOS based direct conversion architectures and mobile tuners, Integrant has become a key provider of low-power radio tuners in the Korean marketplace. Founded in 2000, Integrant has approximately 78 employees, which includes 50 engineers. While earlier tuners were designed on 0.18 µm CMOS, Integrant is presently working on 0.13 µm CMOS designs.

Since Integrant has established brand equity in Asia, ADI plans to retain the Integrant brand and make it a subsidiary of Analog Devices, led by Brian Ko. Operationally, it will become a product line within the High Speed Signal Processing business unit in Analog Semiconductor Components division of ADI, led by John Hussey

According to Hussey, ADI vice president for High-Speed Signal Processing, "As we've seen in applications from cellular telephony to digital TVs, customers value RF solution providers that support multiple standards and frequencies with compatible families of products. Integrant's technology provides that same value to the rapidly emerging mobile TV markets, such as T-DMB, ISDB-T and DVB-H, where receivers are being integrated into mobile phones, personal video players, portable DVD players, notebook PCs, and automotive entertainment systems."

Integrant is known for the low-power digital multimedia broadcast (DMB) tuners it supplies to Korea's leading mobile phone manufacturers. Korea leads the world in the deployment of mobile TV services. In addition, Integrant ships tuners from the same product family to support the new ISDB-T mobile TV standard in Japan. Integrant's designs have resulted in more than 100 patents and patent applications worldwide, including extensive intellectual property (IP) related to the direct conversion of RF signals to baseband frequencies, an area where ADI has also amassed
considerable intellectual property for analog and digital signal processing.

"The synergies between ADI and Integrant are powerful," said Integrant company founder, Beom-Kyu (Brian) Ko. "Together we will have the technology and systems expertise to provide customers with a complete signal chain for multi-standard multimedia applications."