Chinese state-owned chipmaker Tsinghua makes US$23b bid for Micron in landmark deal

China’s state-owned chipmaker Tsinghua Unigroup has submitted a US$23 billion bid to buy out Micron Technology, the No. 2 player in the global memory chip market, according to parties familiar with the deal.

If Micron accepts, it would mark the biggest Chinese takeover of a foreign company to date, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

Shares of Nasdaq-listed Micron have fallen by almost 50 per cent this year, plunging from US$35.01 at the end of December to US$17.61 this Monday. 

Tsinghua Unigroup is offering $21 per share, the daily reported.

Micron reported a 39 per cent drop in profit in the quarter ending June 4 amid concern over the future of the PC market, as mobile devices like smartphones, phablets and tablets gain traction.

Micron is the last US firm standing when it comes to making dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips, which are widely used in personal computers, and NAND flash memory chips, which are used to store data in mobile devices.

Only South Korea's Samsung Electronics is bigger than it in the memory chip market. 

Tsinghua Unigroup became the largest chip design firm in China after acquiring Shanghai-based Spreadtrum Communications and RDA Microelectronics, a Chinese fabless semiconductor company, in 2013, two of the country’s largest mobile-chip firms. 

Last year, Intel bought a 20 per cent stake in Tsinghua for US$1.5 billion.

This May, Tsinghua acquired a controlling stake in the Chinese networking equipment unit of Hewlett Packard.