The merger between two giants of the electronics manufacturing world – Analog Devices Inc. (ADI) and Linear Technology Corp (LTC) – has completed, ADI have announced. As many of the key players in the electronics industry continue to coalesce with each other, such as NXP engulfing Freescale, Texas Instruments eating NatSemi, Microchip colliding with Atmel (never in a million years would I have guessed that given the historic PIC vs AVR war !!!) and many others, this will have positive and negative impacts on new product design from a commercial and technical perspective.
Whilst the merger of silicon design and manufacturing activities will ultimately push down the total cost of IC production, consolidate supply chains, and hopefully increase streamlining in technical support available as tech brains are pooled, the negative consequences in the longer term will include less competition in the marketplace from both an innovation and end user price perspective, as well as a shedding of niche but sometimes useful product lines on the fringes of sales linecards.
Here at Milliamp Technologies we’ve seen this before over the years – as designers we ultimately get a zero sum gain. With the electronics industry having many of the same faces circulating within the industry in both commercial and technical roles we are confident there will be little impact on day-to-day design activities for now – we have close contacts built up from over 20 years operating in this industry in a variety of areas who we can rely on for support, and we are confident no matter what commercial changes occur, ultimately the people, underlying products and processes will still be the same as they have always been – and it will continue to be an exciting and interesting space to work in !
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