RIM buys Paratek for BlackBerry efficiency
Acquires maker of RF components, which aims to improve battery life and reliability in complex handsets
Published: 9 March, 2012
READ MORE: M&A | Research In Motion | RF (WAN) | BlackBerry
Despite the mounting gloom about RIM's prospects, the firm has been steadily snapping up innovative companies to enhance the BlackBerry platform and try to put it back on a par with Apple and Android. Its latest purchase is Paratek Adaptive RF, maker of RF components for handsets.
Paratek makes adaptive RF front ends for mobile devices, components which are increasingly important in modern devices which need to support many technologies without draining the battery.
Alan Spoon, general partner of Paratek's lead investor, Polaris Venture Partners, said in a statement: "Watch out providers of mobile phones.Integrating Paratek's technology into mobile phones is a game changer."
The Paratek technology claims to speed up data download and upload, which prolongs battery life, and to support an antenna design which can enable smaller handsets. Its 'Tunable RF' offering also aims to reduce the number of dropped calls.
Paratek's products allow handsets and software defined radios to transmit and receive on multiple frequency bands, over a single tunable antenna, reducing part count and device size. Its 'Adaptive Impedance Matching Modules' (AIMM) support wide tunability and self-correction, to increase antenna and power amplifier performance, says the company, ,which extends battery life.
Such features are increasingly important in differentiating smartphones, which often have to make a difficult trade-off between the range of functions, and the efficiency and battery life. RIM also gets a team of engineers from Paratek, which was founded in 1998 in New Hampshire.
The smaller firm said in a statement: "As a part of RIM, a technology leader and pioneer in the smartphone category, Paratek will continue to innovate and to bring leading edge adaptive tuning solutions to the industry. We are very excited about this transaction and the opportunity to serve RIM and realize our vision. As always, we will continue to pursue the development of state-of-the-art adaptive tuning technologies."
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