Fox Electronics (Ft. Myers, Fl), a supplier of frequency-control solutions, recently announced its acquisition of Jet City Electronics, Inc. Jet City is a Seattle, Washington-based fabless-semiconductor design firm. This merger makes Fox one of only a handful of crystal-oscillator manufacturers in the high-performance, analog-intensive, mixed-signal timing arena. The acquisition of a semiconductor company by a frequency-control company reveals an emerging trend toward component integration within semiconductor-based technology.
E.L. Fox, Jr., president of Fox Electronics, said, "As the global leader in frequency-control solutions, we give our customers products that provide the very best cost-performance ratios as well as the broadest product offerings. The acquisition of Jet City enhances our ability to do this by bringing fresh, strategic technology that is ready for implementation into the market, instead of relying on endless traditional costreduction techniques that are running out of steam. This, in turn, enables us to develop and implement the latest technologies into our product offerings quickly and cost effectively."
Jet City Electronics was established in 1994. The company pioneered several technologies used in the high-frequency timing industry and several maskless memories to increase reliability while reducing fab costs. The company's core business includes high-performance, analog- intensive, mixed-signal, applicationspecific integrated circuits (ASICs) using phase-locked-loop (PLL) architectures.
Jet City was instrumental in the development of Fox's new line of XpressO configurable oscillators. This product line combines 29 years of Fox crystal-manufacturing knowledge with Jet City's innovations in proprietary ASIC-design and noise-reduction technologies. The resulting devices offer the frequency-control market very low jitter and phase noise, lower cost, faster deliveries, and custom frequencies from 0.75 MHz to 1.35 GHz.
As a wholly-owned subsidiary, Jet City will continue to provide Fox with proprietary timing ASICs as well as with core research and development. To enhance the knowledge and presence of this unique semiconductor capability within the Fox organization, the president of Jet City, John Fallisgaard, will be joining Fox's board of directors. For more information, visit www.foxonline.com.
