Sony Corporation announced today that it will acquire Altair Semiconductor for $212 million. Israel-based Altair makes chips that connect devices to LTE and its technology will help develop Sony’s Internet of Things business.
Established in 2005 by former Texas Instruments executives CEO Oded Melamed, CTO Yigal Bitran and VP Marketing Eran Eshed, the company has 200 employees, most of them in Israel.
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Altair’s LTE is also used to connect objects in the Internet of Things, including fitness trackers, home appliances, and sensors . Right now, most smart things use bluetooth, and sometimes Wi-Fi, to get online because neither standard requires a lot of power.
LTE, however, is emerging as an alternative because it is also low-power but can be used to connect many devices at once, making it a good option for enterprise use cases. Devices can also use existing LTE infrastructure, including networks owned by carriers, making it cost-effective to deploy.
Sony’s purchase of Altair will help it compete against other companies that are also working on cellular standards for the Internet of Things. These include Intel, Ericsson, and Nokia, which are collaborating on technology called Narrow Band-LTE (NB-LTE), which in turn competes with Narrow-Band Cellular IoT (NB-CIoT) from Huawei and Vodafone.
The acquisition is expected to close early next month and Sony says it will not have a material impact on the company’s financial results for 2016.
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