Infineon Technologies AG has announced that it has acquired the Zurich-based startup 3db Access AG (3db), a pioneer in secured low power Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology that is already a supplier to major automotive brands.
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Infineon is acquiring 100 percent of the company’s shares. The parties have agreed not to disclose the amount of the transaction.
According to GlobalData’s deals database, the expertise of 3db in Ultra-Wideband technology accelerates Infineon’s IoT roadmap for leveraging the market opportunities of secured, connected devices.
The combined strengths will enable UWB roll-out to address additional automotive, industrial and consumer IoT applications.
The first set of IoT use cases include secured access and authentication, accurate location tracking and indoor navigation, as well as presence detection utilizing UWB radar implementations.
With Smartphone manufacturers adding UWB capability in the latest and future generations of their products, the demand for UWB-capable devices is expected to grow significantly.
Infineon says it wants to open up the best of this technology to smartphones as well as cars and to enable standalone integration in low-power IoT devices.
In the UWB market with rapidly increasing demand from multiple manufacturers, suppliers are also differentiating themselves through their research activities. With their combined expertise, Infineon and 3db will now offer additional benefits to their customers: Originally an ETH Zurich spinoff, 3db maintains a strategic partnership with ETH. Infineon says it is poised to develop this relationship even further, in addition to intensified collaboration in the relevant standardization bodies for secured localization and sensing.
Moreover, Infineon’s broad market access is backed by extensive R&D activities. With 59 R&D sites worldwide, Infineon currently holds more than 31,000 patents and invests an annual 13 percent of its revenues in R&D.
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