Texas Instruments Is Buying National Semiconductor

Long time power house in the analog semiconductor area National Semiconductor is being bought by Texas Instruments.

Texas Instruments has announced that it intends to acquire National Semiconductor for $25 per share, or about an 80 percent premium over the $14 and change at which NYSE:NSM was trading at earlier in the day. The combined entity will be a major force in the analog semiconductor market, as TI will add NatSemi's analog business to its own, which was already considerable.

"Our two companies complement each other very well," said Don Macleod, National's chief executive officer, in a statement. "TI has much greater scale in the marketplace, with its larger portfolio of products and its large global sales force. This provides a platform to enhance National's strong and highly profitable analog capability, power management in particular, leading to meaningful growth."

It will be sad to see National go. I have been using their analog power parts such as the LM7805 5 volt regulator since the early 70s. But TI has always had a much better sales and marketing force.

I remember back in '67 when I was first looking into logic ICs (TTL and equivalents) at Raytheon Computer that were destined for an FAA computer. Sylvania had the best parts (SUHL) and TI had the best price. We slowed the computer down 20% and bought car loads of the TI parts.