Smartphone bighitters are casting around for technologies to improve the often woeful battery life of LTE devices. Samsung acquired Nanoradio recently to reduce the power impact of Wi-Fi, and now Qualcomm has bought Summit Microelectronics, which makes programmable chipsets designed to optimize power performance in both gadgets and infrastructure.
The price Qualcomm paid was not disclosed but it gains a Silicon Valley firm with 50 employees, all of whom will join the larger company’s core chip division. Summit was founded in 1997 and backed by a range of venture capitalists (August Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, HLM Management, Norwest Venture Partners, Pequot Capital and Spinnaker Ventures).
Qualcomm said in a statement that its ‘power management roadmap will be significantly enhanced with the addition of Summit’s expertise and products’, and that the acquisition ‘enhances the competitiveness of Qualcomm’s chipset solutions and enables us to provide our customers with industry leading power management and charging performance’.
Summit provides highly integrated power management solutions combining power regulation and digital control in a single chip. Its fast charging technology is used by various handsets, tablets and ereaders.