According to Reuters, this is the company’s 2nd major push into semiconductors for self-driving cars after purchasing US chipmaker Intersil Corp. for $3.2B last year.
Will the US lose its foothold in the computer chip industry?
While US chip production continues to grow, (exporting around $44B worth of semiconductors annually), its share of the market (now 13%) has declined as global chipmakers close in.
Renesas is second only to NXP Semiconductors NV in auto-related chips and commands 30% of the global market for microcontrollers used in cars.
There are still a couple of big question marks
Renesas has historically struggled in analog chip production, so they’ll have to lean heavily on IDT’s 20+ years of analog chip experience in their quest for domination.
And, for the deal to close in the first half of 2019 as projected, the companies still have to get approval from US and Chinese antitrust authorities, which, Axios notes, have been “reluctant to approve global semiconductor mergers.”
