Here's a compendium of last week's industry news, which made for an interesting start to 2016:

Companies and Products

Alcatel-Lucent shareholders tendered around 80 percent of their shares to Nokia, enabling the two companies to combine this week (January 14).

We saw another week of back-and-forth offers for ANADIGICS: GaAs Labs matched Party A's $0.58 per share offer, then Party A bumped the bid to $0.62. A third company (Party B) had bid even more: $0.68 per share; however, their offer had provisions that the ANADIGICS board didn't like. Although Party B modified some of these, the board said the offer still had issues. On Friday (January 8), GaAs Labs extended the expiration of their offer from January 8 to January 25; however, their press release did not indicate any increase in the $0.58 per share offer to match Party A's bid of $0.62 per share.

BlackBerry aims to apply their mobile QNX operating system to self-driving cars. Although historically viewed as a mobile player, their software powers in-car navigation and entertainment systems in more than 60 million vehicles.

GigOptix raised guidance for Q4 revenue to $11.1 million, 4 percent higher than prior guidance. The new estimate is 6 percent higher than Q3's revenue and 23 percent above Q4 of 2014. GigOptix attributed the revenue strength to demand for 40G QSFP⁺ products for data centers.

Point-to-point radio supplier IgniteNet chose Peraso's WiGig chipset for their MetroLinq™ PTP60-35 and PTP60-19 60 GHz radio links.

In an interesting vertical move, Intel is acquiring German UAV company Ascending Technologies. Their strategic rationale is to integrate drone computing, communications and sensors. In a blog post, Intel's Josh Walden wrote, "With Ascending Technologies, Intel gains expertise and technology to accelerate the deployment of Intel RealSense technology into the fast growing drone market segment."

NXP announced a 77 GHz, single chip, CMOS automotive radar transceiver. The device is only the size of a postage stamp.

Citing weak mobile demand, Qorvo dropped their Q3 fiscal 2016 revenue forecast to $620 million, ~14 percent below the prior guidance of $720 million to $730 million.

Rohde & Schwarz announced a portable oscilloscope, named R&S Scope Rider, with laboratory instrument performance. The scope has an acquisition rate of 50,000 waveforms per second and a bandwidth of 500 MHz for the analog input channels.

Skyworks introduced several new products at the consumer electronics show (CES):

• two 75 Ω LNAs and two 75 Ω switches for DOCSIS 3.1 set-top boxes, gateways and routers; and
• four PA and T/R module products for IoT and traditional mobile applications.

Sonnet Software announced release 16 of Sonnet. The update increases analysis speed and is compatible with the Modelithics CLR library.

Markets and Technology

Cellular — Judging from device activations the week before Christmas, Apple won the hearts and dollars of consumers.

Despite this rosy news and record sales when the iPhone 6s launched, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple cut their iPhone forecast by 30 percent. Silicon Valley Business Journal article.

AT&T's voice over LTE (VoLTE) service now covers some 27 million U.S. subscribers. It currently only works with AT&T users, although the company is working to establish inter-carrier connections.

Securing cell sites is a significant challenge pacing the deployment of small cells. Integrating small cells with existing light poles is one way to accelerate their deployment writes 3G4G Small Cells blogger Zahid Ghadialy.

You've likely heard of LTE and LTE-Advanced. The next step on the technology roadmap is LTE-Advanced Pro, with performance approaching the levels targeted for 5G.

Mobile Culture — Teenagers are the bellweather of social media and mobile technology, often reflecting their rituals and customs pursuing social acceptance.

Speaking of adolescence, Farhad Manjoo of The New York Times says this year's CES reflects a year of tech in beta.

Economy — Last week was tough on investors and economists, as China devalued its currency and suspended stock trading, sending economic concerns rippling around the globe. The Wall Street Journal believes that the Chinese government's intervention is just masking everything worse.

If you come across news that you think I should include in this weekly summary, please send it to me at glerude@mwjournal.com. Also, if you'd like to receive these weekly updates via email, let me know.