September 28, 2007 – Oki Electric Industry Ltd. has agreed to sell its wireless design center to India’s Wipro Technologies in an undisclosed all-cash deal, in order to focus on its core design capabilities. Wipro also will set up a dedicated development center for Oki.

Wholly owned subsidiary Oki Techno Centre Singapore Pte. Ltd. focuses on wireless design, including RF and baseband. The unit posted about $5.9M in the company’s fiscal year ended in March (<1% of total sales), with "key customers" in Japan for product engineering, the company said in a statement.

OKI has been shifting its design and development focus toward more complex and sophisticated LSIs, and has been looking for a global outsourcing partner to improve its efficiency in semiconductor design, noted Masahiko Morioka, president of Oki Electric Industry’s silicon solutions company.

For Wipro, the deal adds to its capabilities in RF and baseband design, and gives deeper domain strengths in areas like DTV standards, WiMedia UWB, RFID, and wireless LAN 802.11. A 2005 purchase of NewLogic added CMOS RF and IP. It also broadens the firm’s inroads into markets in Japan and East Asia, noted Ramesh Emani, president of Wipro’s telecom and product engineering solutions division.