German engineering conglomerate Siemens has bought the fledgling biochip business of chipmaker Infineon for an undisclosed price, it confirmed on Monday. Siemens' medical equipment unit said it would develop the business - one of a group of emerging businesses Infineon is shedding as it focuses on core activities - and hoped to have a so-called "laboratory on a chip" on the market around 2008.
The chip, dubbed "Quicklab", will be able to analyse genetic material and proteins and give quick results in the form of electrical signals. The tool would make certain types of diagnosis quicker and cheaper, Siemens said.
Siemens said the lab would be able to diagnose the causes of infections, as well as detecting allergies, genetic diseases and intolerance to medicines or transplanted organs.
Siemens Medical, which competes with General Electric and Philips, hopes the new technology will win it a bigger piece of the worldwide molecular diagnostics market, worth around 1 billion euros ($1.25 billion) annually.
Infineon - which decided last year to stop investing in emerging technologies not directly related to its core business in memory, telecoms and automotive chips - said on Friday it was selling the unit but declined to say to whom.
A report in Saturday's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung had said Siemens was the buyer.
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