The acquisition includes a sizeable number of Imagination Technologies employees located in the U.K., Sweden, India, and Taiwan
Nordic Semiconductor is expanding its in-house wireless technology expertise into Wi-Fi after acquiring the entire Ensigma Wi-Fi development team and associated Ensigma Wi-Fi IP tech assets from graphics, vision, and AI processing company, Imagination Technologies.
“This is a dream come true for Nordic and its customers, particularly in the smart home market. We at Nordic feel extremely fortunate and excited to have found the perfect Wi-Fi team with decades of state-of-the-art Wi-Fi design experience and expertise from whom we can learn all there is to know about Wi-Fi wireless technology. We believe in owning every link in our product chain, and with the Imagination Wi-Fi team on-board we will now be able to add Wi-Fi hardware and software developed by Nordic from the ground up,” comments Nordic CTO, Svein-Egil Nielsen.
The acquisition includes a sizeable number of Imagination Technologies employees located in the U.K., Sweden, India, and Taiwan. Of these, around 15 percent are Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) specialists who will now further strengthen Nordic’s existing Bluetooth LE teams as well.
“Although Wi-Fi was born in the consumer sector, it is now rapidly gaining traction within the industrial IoT space,” states Imagination Technologies CEO, Simon Beresford-Wylie.
He added, “With Imagination’s strong focus on graphics, vision, and AI processing, we feel our Wi-Fi IP division will thrive much better long-term within a company that has wireless connectivity at its center and where it will become a major focus of strategic, technological, and commercial innovation and growth. I am extremely happy to have found such a good home for the technology and the team at Nordic Semiconductor: It’s a perfect match.”
Nordic noted that Wi-Fi has long been the number one missing capability requested by its customers and this was the perfect opportunity to merge into its global organization a Wi-Fi development team with a proven track record of delivering state-of-the-art Wi-Fi solutions. It also means Nordic will be one of the few companies to offer all three of the world’s most popular wireless IoT technologies: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular IoT (both LTE-M and NB-IoT versions).
