Qualcomm’s NXP Acquisition and Impact for the Audio Industry

With rumors already circulating for some time, on October 27, 2016, Qualcomm announced a definitive agreement, unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies, under which Qualcomm will acquire NXP Semiconductors. With the acquisition, Qualcomm gets access to a vast portfolio of solutions from the Dutch giant, which was once Philips Semiconductors and remains until now a leading supplier of key technologies for mobile devices and wireless and wired audio applications.

One of the interesting technology stories announced during the 2016 Prolight+Sound show in Frankfurt, was about Fohhn’s award-winning Linea Focus series, with beam steering capabilities, now being equipped for networking via an Optocore fibre solution. Optocore provided a SANE-FX module, mounted directly inside the Linea Focus housing, enabling a versatile and reliable direct fibre network connection to the speaker.

The biggest embedded world exhibition and conference ever, closed with new records. With 939 exhibitors and more than 30,000 trade visitors, the 2016 edition of the event, in Nuremberg, Germany, was again the place to be for the international embedded community - effectively influencing all current industry segments, including the audio industry.

The evidence about how important the Apple Watch is comes from many other recent announcements, including some made at the MWC 2015 in Barcelona. Security, IoT interoperability, wearables, computer vision, communications infrastructure, and ultra-low power connectivity were some of the trends at MWC 2015. It's not by chance that, all those things are effectively combined on the Apple Watch and Apple's current roadmap.

The Embedded World Exhibition & Conference will be held from 24th to 26th February 2015 in Nuremberg, Germany. With 899 exhibitors from 37 countries, the international Embedded Community can once again look forward to three exciting trade fair and congress days, touching on key issues of IoT development and security, M2M and wireless communications.