Silicon Labs Sells Infrastructure and Automotive Business to Focus on IoT

Skyworks Solutions has purchased the business unit for $2.75B.

In April 2021, Silicon Labs announced it had entered into a definitive asset purchase agreement for the sale of its Infrastructure and Automotive business to Skyworks Solutions for $2.75 billion in an all-cash deal. Silicon Labs’ former senior vice president and general manager of IoT Products Matt Johnson has been promoted to president, reporting to CEO Tyson Tuttle. Johnson’s main focus will be accelerating Silicon Labs’ IoT market leadership. The company’s IoT and wireless portfolios include Bluetooth, Thread, Wi-SUN, Wi-Fi, Zigbee (now part of Connectivity Standards Alliance), Z-Wave, and many proprietary wireless technologies. 

Zigbee Alliance has been rebranded as Connectivity Standards Alliance

Zigbee Alliance has been rebranded as Connectivity Standards Alliance

“Since 2018, I’ve partnered with Matt on building and scaling our wireless connectivity business to serve a wide variety of growth markets, including home automation, personal medical, smart cities, and industrial IoT,” said Tuttle. “I’m extremely confident in Matt’s expertise and ability to manage the company’s day-to-day business and product development efforts. He will continue to play a central role in our company’s growth and focus the organization even more on accelerating our IoT market leadership.”   

Matt Johnson has been promoted to president, reporting to CEO Tyson Tuttle. (Source: Silicon Labs.)

Matt Johnson has been promoted to president, reporting to CEO Tyson Tuttle. (Source: Silicon Labs.)

Following the Skyworks sale, around 1,450 Silicon Labs employees will stay with the IoT team. Silicon Labs was founded in 1996 and started to focus on the IoT segment in 2012. It is expected that the company will continue on a growth path. In 2020, it added approximately 300 new employees and expects to hire an additional 300 people in 2021. 

Based in Austin, Texas, Silicon Labs has invested in various IoT arenas for many years. In 2021, the company is targeting $600 million in sales at a projected growth rate of 25%. The company’s IoT pure-play business includes two main market segments. The first one is Home & Life, focusing on the smart home. The second, Industrial & Commercial, targets the smart city, smart building, and smart retail markets with, for example, LED bulbs, door locks, HVAC, commercial lighting, and access control.

The exponential growth of the IoT market

The IoT market has been experiencing exponential growth in recent years. According to Fortune Business Insights, the global market size will grow from $250 billion in 2019 to $1463 billion by 2027. This represents a CAGR of 25%.

The massive IoT opportunities have also attracted many different players. Technologies such as Wi-SUN, NB-IoT, LTE-M, LoRaWAN, Weightless, and many proprietary offerings are all competing for the same business. Silicon Labs, for now, has chosen the Wi-SUN networking standard over that of LoRaWAN.

In the next five years, the hot IoT markets will include smart homes, smart cities, smart buildings, smart manufacturing, telemedicine, smart farming, asset tracking, autonomous driving, automation, transportation, water management, smart energy, AI, and 5G. It looks like Silicon Labs will be serving many of these markets.

Johnson is very optimistic about the future. “We have a strong eco-system in place that includes leaders such as Amazon, Comcast, Google, Tuya and Xfinity,” commented Johnson, “We are hyper-focusing on the unprecedented business opportunities in the IoT, a market opportunity expected to reach $10 billion by 2023. The sky is the limit for us!”