KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysian contract manufacturer Ge-Shen will purchase a 40% stake in EMS firm Local Assembly to expand its presence in electronics manufacturing.

The masses are atwitter over the recently announced Renesas acquisition of Altium, and for good reason. The $5.9 billion price tag is some real coin.

What’s less clear to almost everyone outside the two companies, however, is the underlying strategy and how the merged entity will look going forward.

In announcing the acquisition, Renesas chief executive Hidetoshi Shibata called it “an important first step into our long-term future.” But what is that future?

Obviously, Renesas is not going to take Altium private, for exclusive use by its own customers. The two firms do have many overlapping markets: IoT, consumer, automotive, among others. Renesas also plays in higher-end areas such as high-performance computing that Altium has not to our knowledge penetrated. If OEMs want one-stop shopping for a systems program, a combined Renesas-Altium starts to make some sense. But the latter lacks the chip package tool to complete the proverbial – and literal – circuit.

NORTH YORK, ON – ZTest announced $4.2 million in revenue for the six-month period ending on Dec. 31, a record for the company and an 88% year-over-year increase.

SINGAPORE – ASMPT reported revenue of $435.4 million for the fourth quarter, a year-over-year decrease of 21.4%.