Skyworks Solutions Inc., a chipmaker that has an office in Newport Beach, expanded its business of selling chips to makers of low- cost cell phones with a recent local acquisition.
Woburn, Mass.-based Skyworks recently bought Irvine chip startup Axiom Microdevices Inc., a smaller rival, to augment the niche business of ultra low-end phones, which sell for less than $50.
The deal “expanded our market in handsets with a segment that we didn’t previously address,” said Chief Executive Dave Aldrich. “We were able to improve our patent portfolio pretty dramatically in an important area.”
Axiom Microdevices, which has some 40 workers here, uses a lower-cost manufacturing process to make chips that help cell phones get better reception.
It designs power amplifier chips that help boost a phone’s signal so that cell towers can “hear” it.
What’s different about Axiom’s chips is that the company has found a way to make them cheaper using complementary metal-oxide semiconductor technology, the most common form of chip making known as CMOS.
Making the chips via CMOS smoothes out potential production delays, which helps cell phone makers get their products to market faster.
It also makes phones much cheaper for sale in rural parts of China, India and South America.
For more on this story, read the June 15 issue of the Business Journal.
