Agilent has continued the current M&A spree in the testing sector, buying the test systems unit of AT4 Wireless of Spain.
Agilent says the deal, whose price was not disclosed, will enable it to expand the range of services it offers its customers, especially with regards to LTE. It will also extend its test and measurement portfolio to include the ultra-short range technologies, NFC and RFID, as well as Bluetooth.
The AT4 unit includes 130 employees in Malaga, Spain, who will transfer to Agilent when the acquisition is final. The firm retains its other businesses, which include certification services and IT solutions.
In April, Spirent kicked off the recent spate of testing acquisitions when it bought Mu Dynamics, and a month later, Ixia said it was purchasing Anue Systems for $145m in cash, expanding into tools for monitoring large scale cloud applications and networks.
And earlier this month, another testing firm, Ixia, announced a $160m acquisition of BreakingPoint Systems. This takes it into the market for network probes, which monitor and troubleshoot voice, data and video services. It’s a billion dollar space, but dominated by Tektronix, JDS Uniphase and NetScout, which control amost two-thirds of the segment together, compared to BreakingPoint’s 4%.