The wave of mergers and acquisitions (M & A), which has swept the semiconductor industry in the previous two years, has practically faded in recent months, IC Insights.

According to experts, from January to June 2017 chipmakers around the world have concluded, only about a dozen M & A-transactions totaling $ 1.4 billion, while in the same period of 2016 and 2015, the volume of such agreements was 4.6 And 72.6 billion dollars respectively.

In the first six months of 2016, the semiconductor industry also experienced a slowdown in M ??& A activity, but in the third quarter several large mergers contributed to the growth of transactions between chipmakers. As a result, as a result of the whole of last year, their amount reached almost $ 100 billion, only slightly short of a record $ 107.3 billion registered in 2015.

Although in July 2017, announcements of several semiconductor deals are expected, this year, most likely, will not be a record. Even if M & A activity in the second half of the year grows, the total amount of merger deals for semiconductor companies is unlikely to approach the figures of the previous two years, analysts say..

Experts point out that the M & A-activity in chipmakers th 2017 by the absence of large mega-deals. So, since the beginning of 2017, the industry has registered only one merger for more than half a billion dollars: in March, the semiconductor company MaxLinear announced the purchase of $ 687 million for the manufacturer of analog and mixed integrated circuits Exar Corp. The deal was closed in May.

Meanwhile, in 2016, it announced seven acquisitions worth more than $ 1 billion (in three cases, the transaction amount exceeded $ 10 billion), and in 2015, there were ten (of which four - worth more than $ 10 billion).

The specialists made a reservation that when analyzing M & A activity, mergers and acquisitions of only semiconductor manufacturers were taken into account, eliminating transactions in which chip makers purchased software developers and representatives of other business areas.

For example, in the IC Insights list of M & A deals in 2017 did not include the announced in March purchase by Intel Corporation for $ 15.3 billion Israeli company Mobileye, specializing in developing software and technologies for digital imaging for unmanned vehicles.