Thursday, February 19, 2009

MAXIM acquires two product lines from Zilog

SUNNYVALE, CA – February 19, 2009 – Maxim Integrated Products (NASDAQ: MXIM) announced today that it has acquired the Wireless Control and Secured Transaction product lines from Zilog, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZILG). Maxim expects the acquisition of these product lines will be accretive to earnings and cash flow in its fiscal year 2009 and later.

Wireless Control Product Line
In this transaction, Maxim and Universal Electronics Incorporated (NASDAQ: UEIC) jointly purchased the Wireless Control business of Zilog. Maxim purchased the hardware portion of the Wireless Control product line from Zilog, which consists of the microcontroller silicon chip business and supporting intellectual property. Maxim intends to combine the Zilog wireless microcontroller product line with its own unique, ultra-low power Infrared (IR) microcontroller family. UEI purchased the software portion of Zilog’s Wireless Control product line, which consists of its patents, universal remote database and software, and related assets. The combination of Maxim’s low-power microcontrollers and UEI’s industry leading IR databases will enable customers to design and manufacture universal remote controls with advanced features, improved performance, and longer battery life.

Secure Transaction Product Line
Maxim also acquired Zilog’s Secure Transaction product line, which features the Zatara® 32-bit ARM®-based microcontroller family of high performance ARM System-on-Chips (SoCs) used in PCI (Payment Card Industry) payment terminals. These products deliver a highly secure computing environment that enables customers to accelerate time to market and reduce costs in security-critical applications.

“Maxim’s purchase of the Secure Transaction business is consistent with our strategy to strengthen our position in the POS (point of sale) and ATM markets,” said Chris Neil, Division Vice President of Maxim. “This acquisition allows us to further leverage the application and software expertise recently added by our purchase of Innova Card to create the highest performance, fully integrated SoCs and most complete open software platform for financial transaction terminal markets.”