Wipro acquires OTCS
So an Indian company has placed its foothold in the Singapore semicon design space….
Wipro Technologies has signed an agreement with Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd. of Japan to acquire Oki Techno Center Singapore(OTCS), a wholly-owned subsidiary focused on wireless design and intellectual property. The all-cash transaction is expected to conclude within a year. Wipro will establish a dedicated development center to offer wireless semiconductor and embedded software design services to Oki.
OTCS has RF and baseband design capabilities, and the 40-member company has revenues of nearly 9M S$. It caters to Oki’s in-house requirements for semiconductor designs for its wireless communications equipment business.
To Oki, the deal has provided a global partner to improve its efficiency in semiconductor design through outsourcing.
Wipro has been expanding its chip design services portfolio. With digital expertise already existing, it has been adding analog and RF skills. It’s acquisition of Austria’s Newlogic in 2005 brought in expertise & IPs in Bluetooth and WLAN technos. Wipro-NewLogic with 61% market share has more than three times the share of its nearest competitor in Wireless LAN. Gartner also rates Wipro-NewLogic as the number one worldwide supplier of Bluetooth based on Design IP revenue commanding 59% market share in 2006. This OTCS acquisition helps in ZigBee, UWB and RFID related technologies.
……..And it has also provided Wipro access into the Japanese market for outsourced semiconductor designs– a geography where Wipro already has a strong presence in the IT services space.