https://medium.com/@miccowang/the-first-direct-victims-from-us-cn-trade-war-qualcomm-and-nxp-a3b7b4008d0b

As we can see from the comments excerpted from transcripts, Qualcomm had scrapped its $44 billion purchase of Dutch chip maker NXP after failing to secure approval in China, making the deal one of the most prominent victims of spiraling U.S.-China trade tensions and derailing a central part of the U.S. chip giant’s strategy. When Qualcomm and NXP announced the deal, the general perception was that the products and resources of the two complemented each other. Qualcomm would gain access to one of the top 3 market share holders in automotive semiconductor, a large MCU portfolio (that Qualcomm completely lacks presence), industry-leading NFC technology (one of the few key wireless technologies that Qualcomm doesn’t truly control), a global distribution network that includes key OEMs in consumer, automotive and industrial segments. NXP would gain access to the Snapdragon technologies, such as the Adreno GPU, Hexagon DSP, and Spectra ISP; leading solutions in wireless technologies, including 5G, NB-IoT, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth; and Qualcomm’s efforts in edge machine learning and AI. NXP’s “more legacy” automotive solutions (compared to Nvidia) would get an instant boost from Qualcomm, and the combined Qualcomm-NXP would instantly become the favorite to lead, in all those important emerging segments, beyond 2020.

China was the last of nine markets that needed to approve the deal, which would have been among the biggest ever between technology companies. The acquisition was announced in October 2016 and extended in April as the chip makers sought approval from China’s competition regulators. While both companies have continued to assert their dominance in their respective markets during this waiting period, this long acquisitions have become very difficult. Generally speaking, companies often freeze certain expenditures, especially the company being acquired, such as hiring, marketing, and/or R&D prior to acquisitions. Meanwhile, competitors try to steal talent and customers in anticipation of discontent over potential changes in products and services, policies, or pricing. NXP, for example, discontinued its FTF developer conference, one of the best events for embedded/industrial engineers. NXP had also sold its China JV as an attempt to earn approval from Chinese anti-monopoly regulators.