Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Broadcom Buys Global Locate

Irvine-based semiconductor firm Broadcom has acquired San Jose-based Global Locate, a developer of assisted GPS and GPS semiconductors, for approximately $146M in cash. Broadcom said that it is acquiring the firm because it expects the demand for GPS devices to increase dramatically as deployment of mobile phones increase. The deal is expected to close in Broadcom's Q3, which ends September 30th, and also includes up to $80M in earn out. Global Locate is venture backed by Firsthand Capital Management, GC Investments, Motorola, Siemens Venture Capital and Third Point Offshore Fund. Global positions system and assisted GPS chips are used in the design of mobile phones to provide location aware services; assisted GPS uses cellular network information to reduce the amount of time to get "first time to fix" on GPS satellites.