Despite being the week of Christmas, last week was pretty busy:

Companies and Products

The ANADIGICS acquisition saga continued: GaAs Labs matched the $0.48 per share offered by an unnamed competitor. Within a day, the competitor increased its bid to $0.54 per share (approximately $49 million). GaAs Labs has until December 28 to respond.

Anatech Electronics introduced a cavity duplexer for Band 4 (1710 to 1785 MHz receive, 1805 to 1880 MHz transmit). The AD1747-1842D335 has insertion loss of ≤ 1.2 dB, ripple ≤ 0.8 dB, passband return loss > 14 dB and isolation ≥ 50 dB.

Apple and Ericsson reached a patent cross-license agreement, settling all infringement claims. The terms of the agreement are confidential, although Ericsson said that Apple will pay royalties.

Comtech Telecommunications' acquisition of TeleCommunication Systems cleared the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) antitrust review. Comtech's $5 per share tender offer to Telecommunication Systems stockholders expires January 5.

Ford and Google are forming a joint venture to build self-driving vehicles, combining each company's expertise.

Keysight added 2G and 3G test capabilities to their UXM test set to simplify testing multi-standard LTE devices.

Mitsubishi is adding four GaN power transistors for the 3.5 GHz wireless infrastructure band. The four new products have saturated output powers of 180, 90, 7 and 5 W. Samples will be available February 1.

Peraso Technologies released a 60 GHz WiGig chipset to production. They are targeting high data rate networking, storage and display applications.

Skyworks released SiGe LNAs and filter/LNA modules for satellite navigation receivers.

SpaceX proved the reusable rocket concept, after launching 11 Orbcomm satellites, then landing the Falcon launch rocket. The video of the landing is quite impressive.

TowerJazz added an ADS process design kit and Momentum module deck for the TowerJazz Panasonic Semiconductor 65 nm RF CMOS platform.

Twitter applied for a patent for a "messaging-enabled" UAV. Asked about it, the company's spokesperson said "Two words: Drone selfies."

Markets and Technology

Broadband — Comcast tested DOCSIS 3.1 in a Philadelphia home using their existing hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) network. Although they termed the trial as "gigabit," Comcast did not disclose the actual data rate achieved.

South Korea topped Akamai's ranking of countries with the highest average connection speed during Q3 of 2015, at 20.5 Mbps. The U.S. average was 12.6 Mbps. Download the report.

With the frenzy of M&A activity, I find it interesting to learn about the people behind the curtain. The Wall Street Journal recently profiled tech deal maker Frank Quattrone, head of Qatalyst Partners.

Hopefully, this week between Christmas and New Year's will be quiet, although I'll be watching for the next moves in the acquisition of ANADIGICS.

Have a good week.