Merger wave..

What is going on in semiconductor market ? Few years ago it was evident that small semiconductor companies will find it hard to sustain in the new growth areas. ICs were getting more complex and more functionalities were being integrated into single chip. Once its functionality gets absorbed there is no more need for stand alone IC doing that and hence the semiconductor company doing just that IC is out of business. IC design is also moving to ever shrinking geometries. Process technologies in 16nm,14 nm or 10nm are way too expensive for even mid-size companies, let alone small companies.
All of the above facts and trend are not secret, it is well known  and was expected to drive some consolidation in the industry. In addition some of the companies were getting most of their revenue from smartphones. Slowing growth in smartphones is also pushing companies to merge or aquire others so that source of revenue is not concentrated in one industry. Here is the list of mergers/acquisitions I am aware of:

NXP+Freescale: (not sure who is acquiring who)
Intel+Altera: with Intel acquiring Altera
Avago+Braodcom: Avago acquiring Braodcom
Dialog+Ateml: Dialog acquiring Atmel.
Skyworks+PMC-sierra: Skyworks acquiring PMC sierra

Interestingly, last 3 companies, Broadcom, Dialog and Skyworks were getting most of their revenues from smartphone (Iphone and others). The last two mergers happened within a week !!

The expectation, at least from me, was that this consolidation would happen over a period of time 1 or 2 years. I was not expecting the companies to rush into this where almost every month there is a merger/acquisition news. Are they telling us something that we dont know yet ? Is smartphone growth slowing faster than expected ? Is the 13million sales number quoted by Apple for Iphone-6s, a sign of slowdown ?

We will have to wait watch how all of this plays out in the long ( 1 or 2 years !) run.