SiRF Acquires Centrality

SiRF star III
SiRF announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Centrality Communications Inc, a leading developer of navigation processor solutions for mobile navigation devices, for a total consideration of $283 million in stock and cash. The deal will bring more power in the mobile chipset area to the GPS chipset capabilities of SiRF.

“SiRF and Centrality have a shared vision of bringing the benefits of location information to mainstream consumers through innovations. We believe that there is a large potential market opportunity for mobile consumer devices with convergence of location, entertainment and wireless communications capabilities,” said Kanwar Chadha, founder and vice president of marketing for SiRF. “Our combined expertise can deliver very powerful end-to-end multifunction location platforms to location-enable a broad range of new devices and services and to help our customers, operators and content partners add more value to their offerings while significantly enhancing the consumer experience.”

Founded in 1999, Centrality has developed a range of system on a chip (SoC) offerings that bring high quality navigation and multimedia experience to consumers in mobile environments. Headquartered in Redwood City, California, Centrality has more than 190 employees and a worldwide presence with its main development center in Shanghai, China and branch offices in Taipei, Seoul and Brussels.

Centrality's Atlas™ and Titan™ family of navigation processors together deliver the new standard in features and value for the navigation infotainment systems (NIS) market. By leveraging Centrality's suite of reference platforms, leading NIS manufacturers can deliver compelling products and services to market quickly.

“World class multifunction SoC platform expertise is a significant differentiator for us, especially as we address the emerging needs of portable navigation, automotive and consumer markets with value-added products,” said Dr. Michael Canning, president and chief executive officer of SiRF. “Centrality’s team has a proven track record of delivering innovative solutions to market and we believe that the combined entity can provide a very attractive product portfolio to address the price performance and functionality needs of our customers. In addition, the Shanghai Center will enable us to scale our development activities rapidly and significantly strengthen our capabilities to address the fast-growing China market.”

With its primary focus on portable navigation-infotainment devices, Centrality has developed a range of platforms centered on enhancing the location, information and entertainment experience of consumers. Based on a proprietary dual-core processor architecture, these SoCs have integrated GPS, DSP, graphics and multimedia accelerators, providing breakthrough performance while achieving lower cost. While the Atlas™ family focuses on high performance value solutions, the Titan™ platform is designed for the highest end solutions.

“Centrality has developed a leading innovative family of SoC processors for navigation infotainment systems and these combined with SiRF’s overall location platform market leadership, global brand recognition, and worldwide support infrastructure opens up vast opportunities for our platforms,” said Rob Baxter, president and chief executive officer of Centrality. “Joining forces with SiRF enables us to combine our SoC platform and media expertise with SiRF’s location and multifunction radio expertise, further strengthening our technology leadership position and enabling us to bring more value-added products to market quickly.”

Centrality delivers platforms with full reference design support in order to ensure that customers enjoy the best system performance, shortest time-to-market and enhanced product differentiation. As a leading provider of embedded GPS platforms, Centrality supports multiple operating system environments to address customer needs. With a large number of fully qualified ODM customers, Centrality can help bring better and more innovative products to market faster.

Under the terms of the Agreement, in exchange for all of the outstanding capital stock of Centrality, including equity awards, SiRF has agreed to pay $283 million in a combination of cash and shares of SiRF Common Stock. The boards of directors of both companies have approved the merger. Completion of this transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close next quarter.

June 21, 2007

SiRF Acquires Centrality