Qualcomm expected to get EU's approval to acquire NXP

It’s not official yet, but the European Commission is expected to approve Qualcomm’s $47 billion acquisition of NXP. Initially the Commission thought that the combination of Qualcomm’s baseband processors and NXP’s NFC tech will harm competition.

It seems that its in-depth investigation has concluded that this is not the case. Both Qualcomm and the Commission have not made an official comment yet.

This comes as a bit of good news for the Snapdragon maker as it’s trying to fight off a takeover by Broadcom. Broadcom stated that it wants to acquire Qualcomm regardless of the outcome of the NXP deal, but things may be harder now. Both NXP and Broadcom produce Wi-Fi chips so this additional merger may not sit well with antitrust regulators.

Qualcomm is still in court in a $1 billion battle with Apple (one of its biggest customers). Just months ago Taiwant fined Qualcomm $774 million for antitrust violations (not the first such fine in recent years).

Source (paywalled)