"The acquisition of AWAIBA is a natural fit for CMOSIS. It strengthens our presence in existing markets and expands our activities in adjacent segments with complementary image sensor products. It also strengthens our relationship with our existing customer base," stated Luc De Mey, CMOSIS Chairman and CEO. "The acquisition became possible after TA Associates stepped in as a strong financial partner of CMOSIS earlier this year. This enabled horizontal expansion and growth acceleration. AWAIBA is a profitable and well-established brand with an attractive and strongly growing client base. We are very excited to welcome their experienced team having an impressive track record of innovation and deep understanding of customer needs. This permits us to even better serve our customers as an independent and pure-play supplier of CMOS image sensors."
"AWAIBA and CMOSIS are joining forces. This allows AWAIBA to secure the financial, human and technological resources for the development of next-generation line-scan and sub-millimeter sized image sensors," commented Martin Waeny, AWAIBA founder and CEO. "The newly combined entity will take a much stronger position as a leading supplier of high-quality CMOS image sensors in the consolidating markets of advanced image sensors."
CMOSIS' announcement came a week after e2v annouced its intention to buy Spanish Anafocus. Optics.org publishes an article on the acquisition and analysis of the consolidating European image sensor scene.
AWAIBA branches are in Germany and Portugal....not Spain
ReplyDeleteThanks, corrected.
DeleteWhat is the amount of transaction? Anyone knows?
ReplyDeleteThey are joining forces, not really buying each other.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good acquisition that makes a lot of sense, not like all the previous acquisitions we have seen this year.
ReplyDeleteWhat is a good acquisition ? Why does this acquisition makes a lot of sense ? Because they are your friends or what ? Why are the previous acquisitions bad ones ? Because they are your competitors or what ?
DeleteLOL. Cat fight - This is what happens when you have a tiny country where almost every engineer works in imaging and is classified either as a friend or an enemy. No middle ground.
DeleteBecause Awaiba is on tiny sensors and line scan and CMOSIS is on megapixels. They have complementary products and markets but similar technologies.
DeleteIt is not the case in the previous big acquisitions like ON who now has competing groups.
ON Semi was born from Motorola. Motorola was once called a collection of warring tribes, so it is part of their heritage. In fact, it is not so bad to have some redundancy in capability if your trying to become a large player (or regain a top position, in the case of the Aptina tribe) as long as you can afford it. ON has the chance to get to the #3 spot after Sony and Samsung. Plus the ON acquisitions have not been that expensive. (Do you remember when Cypress bought FillFactory for about USD$100M?) I don't know the details of the CMOSIS/AWAIBA acquisition or merger but it also makes sense, and hopefully cents.
DeleteFully agree with Eric. Both companies made good acquisitions also given that the imaging field is growing fast. To the "cat fight" anonymous above. Some geography knowledge doesn't hurt ;). Belgium is not a small country and the imaging field is a very small portion of the many microelectronics companies operating in Belgium.
DeleteEric, Cypress made a big blunder in buying Fillfactory and that too for an exaggerated price. It was a great due diligence error on Cypress' part. ON has been known as a tough negotiator and that is why it also hires people for cents.
DeleteIt's funny if Arnaud is considered a competitor of the company who made senseless acquisitions. Is he a competitor of any company??
ReplyDeleteWe are not competing with any image sensor company as we do not make image sensors.
DeleteHey Anonymous, would you dare to say who you are?
DeleteEveryone is missing some real issues confronting this industry and that is the IP grab and growth trends tilting towards inorganic growth rather than organic/IP development. There is clearly a defined TAM out into the future for sensors and verticals they can penetrate and private equity recognizes they only sure way to acquire share, revenue and be able to flip is through M & A. The cap ex thresholds have been reached and smaller companies are no longer able to grow without M & A. Business models prove that once critical mass is reached through strategic acquisitions, all many of these companies have to do is ride the growth wave into the trillion sensors future...and then flip them.
ReplyDeleteThis view definitely has some basis, but let me show a different view.
DeleteHistorically, the biggest investment and the hardest part in image sensors was the pixel development. Indeed, it's close to impossible for a small company to compete with the "big 3" on the pixel quality.
However, TowerJazz acquisition of Panasonic fabs and providing Panasonic pixels to anyone on the foundry basis changes the game. To a degree, this levels the game between the "big 3" and the small companies, for the first time in the last 10 years.
I would not be too surprised if the "big 3" eventually offer their own foundry services based on their pixels.
We already see the first signs of it: Pelican uses Aptina pixels, some Japanese companies use Toshiba pixel technology, etc. An ability to use proven and ready pixels significantly lowers entry barrier for new companies. So, it would interesting to see how it develops in 5 years from now.