Businessweek

Analog Devices, Inc. designs, manufactures, and markets a portfolio of analog, mixed-signal, and digital signal processing (DSP) integrated circuits (ICs) used in various types of electronic equipment. The company’s ICs are designed to address a range of signal processing applications. The company’s signal processing products play a fundamental role in converting, conditioning, and processing phenomena, such as temperature, pressure, sound, light, speed, and motion into electrical signals to be used in a range of electronic devices. It produces a range of products, including data converters, amplifiers and linear products, radio frequency (RF) ICs, power management products, sensors based on micro-electro mechanical systems (MEMS) technology and other sensors, and processing products, including DSP and other processors — that are designed to meet the needs of a base of customers. The company’s products are used by approximately 60,000 customers worldwide, and are embedded inside various types of electronic equipment, including industrial process control systems, medical imaging equipment, factory automation systems, patient monitoring devices, instrumentation and measurement systems, wireless infrastructure equipment, energy management systems, networking equipment, aerospace and defense electronics, optical systems, automobiles, digital cameras, digital televisions, and portable electronic devices. Principal Products The company’s product portfolio includes both general-purpose products used by a range of customers and applications, as well as application-specific products designed for specific clusters of customers in primary target markets. Analog Products The company’s analog IC customers include original equipment manufacturers and customers who build electronic subsystems for integration into larger systems. Converters: The company supplies data converter products. Data converters translate analog signals into digital data and also translate digital data into analog signals. Its converter products combine sampling rates and accuracy required by industrial, automotive, consumer, and communications electronics. Amplifiers/RF: The company supplies amplifiers. Amplifiers are used to condition analog signals. Within this product portfolio, the company provides precision, instrumentation, high-speed, intermediate frequency/RF, broadband, and other amplifiers. It also offers a portfolio of precision voltage references that are used in various applications. The company’s analog product line also includes a portfolio of RF ICs covering the entire RF signal chain, from RF function blocks, such as phase locked loops, frequency synthesizers, mixers, modulators, demodulators, and power detectors, to integrated broadband and short-range single chip transceiver solutions. Its RF ICs support the requirements of cellular infrastructure and a range of applications in its target markets. Other Analog: Also within the company’s analog technology portfolio are products that are based on MEMS technology. This technology enables the company to build small sensors that incorporate an electromechanical structure and the supporting analog circuitry for conditioning signals obtained from the sensing element. Its MEMS product portfolio includes accelerometers used to sense acceleration, gyroscopes used to sense rotation, inertial measurement units used to sense multiple degrees of freedom combining multiple sensing types along multiple axis, and MEMS microphones used to sense audio. In addition to its MEMS products, its other analog product category includes isolators that enable designers to implement isolation in designs. Its isolators have been designed into various applications, such as universal serial bus isolation in patient monitors, where it allows hospitals and physicians to adopt the latest advances in computer technology to supervise patient health and wirelessly transmit medical records. Power Management and Reference: Power management and reference products make up the balance of the company’s analog sales. Those products, which include functions, such as power conversion, driver monitoring, sequenci