Solectron Corp, which last month agreed to acquire another of IBM Corp’s electronic card assembly and test operations, will become IBM’s worldwide manufacturer for motherboards used in its mobile products for the next three years as a result of the deal. The Milpitas, California-based contract manufacturer has now completed the acquisition of the unit, based in Austin, Texas. Financial details were not disclosed. As part of the transaction, Solectron will lease a manufacturing facility on IBM’s Austin campus and merge the operations into its own Austin campus within three years. It wins access to 100 IBM patents through the deal, which follows on from last year’s acquisition of IBM’s electronic card assembly and test operations in Charlotte, North Carolina. Solectron gained access to a further 115 patents through that deal, and a contract to supply IBM with logic and network adapter cards for three years (CI No 3,409). The Austin deal is the second largest in the company’s history, after its acquisition, also last year, of three manufacturing plants from NCR Corp in Dublin Ireland, Columbia South Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia.
