Zoran Corporation Acquires Fabless Let It Wave

Zoran has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Let It Wave, a fabless semiconductor company based in Paris, France. Let It Wave delivers award winning and patent-pending technology for video Frame Rate Conversion and image enhancement capabilities for flat panel televisions and other consumer electronics products.

The need to reduce motion blur on LCD TVs has driven the introduction of 120Hz panels and the development of Motion Compensated Frame Rate Conversion ("MCFRC") solutions. In addition, studio movie content, including Blu Ray content, uses 24 images per second, which requires conversion to 60 or 120Hz for best viewing quality. Let It Wave's unique and proprietary MCFRC technology is designed to produce sharper images and reduce judder by creating additional frames using its superior Bandlet technologies. With its multi-scale geometrical processing, the solution robustly determines the direction of motion regularity, overcoming the limitations of traditional block-search algorithms. By acquiring Let It Wave, Zoran intends to deliver high-performance image processing that enables artifact-free true-MCFRC for flat panel televisions as well as other video consumer electronics products.

Under the terms of the agreement, Zoran will acquire Let It Wave in an all cash transaction valued at up to $27.6 million, which includes earnout provisions. Zoran believes that the transaction will be accretive on a non-GAAP basis no later than the second half of 2009, with minimal impact to its earnings for the remainder of 2008 on a non-GAAP basis. The acquisition is expected to close on or about June 11, 2008.

Source: BroadcastBuyer