Texas Instruments in talks to buy rival chipmaker Maxim Integrated Products

The world's third-largest chip maker, Texas Instruments Inc, is in talks to buy rival Maxim Integrated Products Inc, Bloomberg yesterday reported, as chipmakers seek deals to cut costs and expand offerings.

Maxim, which is also being courted by Analog Devices Inc, may not be willing to sell unless it gets a significant premium, the report said and added that the talks are continuing and may or may not result in a transaction.

Maxim, based in San Jose, California, has a market cap of $11.9 billion.

Founded in 1951, Texas Instruments is the world's third-largest manufacturer of semiconductors after Intel and Samsung, the second-largest supplier of chips for cellular handsets after Qualcomm, and the largest producer of digital signal processors and analog semiconductors.

The Texas-based company generates about $8.1 billion of its $13 billion annual sales from analog semiconductors, $2.7 billion from embedded processors and $2.2 billion from others.

It sells nearly 100,000 analog ICs and embedded processors, along with software and tools to more than 100,000 customers worldwide and employs 31,000 people.

It has more than 41,000 patents and issued another 800 worldwide in 2014 and currently has a market cap of $60.2 billion.

Maxim develops ICs for the automotive, industrial, communications, consumer, and computing markets.

Based in California, the company posted 2015 sales of $2.31 billion, 8,800 employees, and 35,000 customers worldwide.

It sells nearly 100,000 analog ICs and embedded processors, along with software and tools to more than 100,000 customers worldwide.