JAN. 28–TAIPEI–Infineon Technologies, Europe’s second-largest chip maker, that it had agreed to buy a unit of Accton Technology, the Taiwanese maker of computer networks, for $101 million to bolster its Internet access business.

The purchase of Accton’s ADMtek unit is Infineon’s first acquisition of a controlling stake in an Asian semiconductor maker, the companies said at a press conference in Taiwan. ADMtek designs chips used in networking equipment that connects home electronics to the Internet.

Taking over ADMtek will help extend Infineon’s line of communications chips for broadband Internet equipment into the consumer market for the first time, said Thomas Seifert, head of Infineon’s wireline communications business group, at the press event in Taipei.

“The acquisition will fuel our activities in the access segment of the wireline communications business group by reaching a broader market,” Infineon said in a statement.

Infineon, based in Munich, wants to help its wireline unit return to profit by bolstering the Internet access business, which Ulrich Schumacher, the chief executive, this month said would experience “rapid growth.”

The wireline group was Infineon’s only unprofitable business in the latest quarter and the company has said it may sell the unit’s fiber-optic business or find a partner for it.