Dialog Semiconductor was created in May 1985 as IMP Limited, the European subsidiary of U.S.-based International Microelectric Products, Inc. In late 1989, Daimler-Benz acquired IMP and folded the business into subsidiary Temic Telefunken Microelectric GmbH. In March 1998, Apax Partners, Adtran, and Ericsson provided funding for the subsidiary to separate from Daimler and form an independent company. Dialog began trading as a public company on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange on 18 September 1999. In 2005, Jalal Bagherli was appointed as Dialog's CEO. He had previously been CEO of Alphamosaic, a video processing chip specialist acquired by Broadcom in 2004. Since 2007, Dialog Semiconductor has been the exclusive supplier of power management integrated circuits for the Apple iPhone, iPad, and Watch. Apple comprised 74% of Dialog's sales in 2016.
Acquisitions
Dialog has made numerous acquisitions including:
2011 - VoIP and wireless chipmaker SiTel Semiconductor for $86.5 million.
2013 - Dialog acquired iWatt Inc, which had filed for an IPO the prior year, for roughly $345 million, paying $310 million in cash and pledging an additional $35 million in contingent considerations.
2015 - Dialog made a $4.6 billion for Atmel. This acquisition was cancelled in January 2016 when Atmel instead agreed to be purchased by Microchip for $3.56 billion in cash and stock. To break the agreement, Atmel paid Dialog a termination fee of $137.3 million.
2017 - Silego Technology, a maker of configurable mixed-signal integrated circuits, for $306 million, of which $276 would be paid in cash, with an additional contingent consideration of up to $30.4 million. The deal added consumer electronics companies like Fitbit, Garmin, and GoPro to Dialog's roster of customers.
2018 - Apple announced its intent to purchase part of Dialog's business in a $300 million cash deal. Included in the deal was the transfer of 300 Dialog employees to Apple, which represented roughly 16% of Dialog's workforce. Apple also committed another $300 million to purchase Dialog products. In April 2019, Dialog and Apple completed the workforce and intellectual property transfer aspects of the deal.
2019 - Dialog agreed to buy Silicon Motion Technology's FCI mobile communicationsproduct line for $45 million. The deal expanded Dialog's range of low-power connected devices by adding FCI's battery-operated Wi-Fi Internet of Things controllers to its existing line of Bluetooth products. The acquisition also added roughly 100 engineers, based in South Korea, to Dialog's workforce.
2019 - Dialog agreed to buy Germany’s Creative Chips as part of its push into low-energy connectivity used for devices in the internet of things. Dialog paid $80 million for the acquisition, with an additional consideration of $23 million based on revenues targets for the next two years.
2020 - Dialog bought US-based Adesto, a provider of application-specific semiconductors and embedded systems for the Industrial IoT, for $500 million.
