The Norwegian chipmaker Nordic Semiconductor recently announced its second-quarter results which came in ahead of market expectations.
www.newelectronics.co.uk, Aug. 13, 2025 –
According to the company, stronger demand for its new nRF54 product platform is driving growth and it expects Q3 revenues to reach between $165 million to $185 million.
The company, which supplies Bluetooth and cellular IoT components for devices from PC accessories to industrial asset trackers, is also seeing growing optimism in several key end markets raising hopes of a recovery in the semiconductor market.
Nordic Semiconductor's short-range wireless business is driven by its flagship nRF52 and nRF53 series but now its newer nRF54 products are being rolled out to more customers and it is expected to have a significant impact on revenues in 2026.
Nordic said that it would be targeting average annual growth above 20% over the coming decade and sees the nRF54 platform as a key long-term growth engine.
But beyond these products Nordic is laying much deeper foundations in its key markets. Earlier this year it announced that it was buying the US startup Memfault for $120m, acquiring the company’s cloud-based software monitoring platform.
The cloud platform monitors equipment in the field and enables and supports secure over the air updates across the Internet of Things (IoT).
According to Nordic Semiconductors’ CEO Vegard Wollan, “This acquisition means that Nordic has become the first semiconductor company to combine best-in-class hardware, software, and cloud services – three pillars.
“We are looking to transform how connected products are built, deployed, and upgraded to address rapidly evolving requirements and increasing software complexity.
“Memfault’s acquisition helps us to lay a complete foundation for the business. While we are the connectivity hub in our customers products, that’s a baseline, and we wanted to become more involved in application software and to ensure the quality of their products.
“Today our customers need to be connected to their products – but the base technology is complicated, especially as you increase observability or experiment with Edge AI. Frequent OTA upgrades and the need for greater observability is also increasing.
“We decided to take a more holistic view and to become a solutions provider that spans connectivity in its entirety. We also want to simplify and speed up development cycles.”
Nordic Semiconductor has established a leading position in low-power wireless connectivity solutions, as demonstrated by its recent results, and this acquisition marked a major leap in Nordic’s evolution - from a hardware supplier to essentially a complete solutions partner.
“By acquiring Memfault Nordic can now provide a comprehensive platform that simplifies development and accelerates time-to-market,” Wollan explained. He continued, “Throughout the product lifecycle, continuous software upgrades strengthen the security, performance, power consumption, and functionality of products in the field. We want to be able to help customers to focus on innovation – and not have to navigate fragmented and complex IoT ecosystems.”
Memfault combines device observability and management with secure over-the-air (OTA) software updates to ensure device reliability without the need for field returns and is engaged with a growing developer community.
“Nordic will integrate Memfault’s capabilities across its complete product portfolio and into its existing nRF Cloud services platform, creating a significantly more powerful solution,” said Wollan. “We’re enabling thousands of customers to continuously interact with millions of devices in the field and by combining Nordic’s ultra-low power wireless connectivity solutions with Memfault’s cloud services, we are going to make it faster, simpler, and more secure to develop, maintain, and improve connected products through their entire lifecycle.”
The move comes in response to a growing trend in which IoT nodes are now becoming more intelligent through the deployment of Edge AI. In addition, with security standards evolving under new frameworks the company will now be able to help developers to stay ahead of industry and regulatory expectations.
“Nordic is committed to supporting every IoT device maker and that includes all existing Memfault customers,” explained Wollan. “Further enhancements to the platform are planned and we are looking at investing in hardware integration, device management, and advanced AI capabilities.”
This is a significant acquisition on the part of Nordic, according to Wollan. “It helps us to move ahead of our competitors; we’re acquiring a proven technology and a company experiencing strong growth and many or our customers overlap.”
Known for its ultralow power chips, SDKs and software offering Nordic can now offer cloud connectivity and cloud lifecycle management, taking away all the complexity confronted by customers.
As Wollan explained, “The acquisition means that we are a solution partner for the entire lifetime of the product.”
Memfault has over 60 staff located in California, New York and Berlin, and has been successfully tapping into the explosion being seen in software complexity.
“It will be folded into Nordic’s cloud management team,” added Wollan, “but Memfault will continue to support non-Nordic customers and that won’t change with the acquisition.”
“We will continue to keep Memfault as a standalone offering and brand and those relationships with non-Nordic semiconductor customers will hopefully continue.”
Nordic scouted the market extensively before acquiring Memfault, which Wollan described as being a natural fit.
“We were unable to identify a clear number two to Memfault which naturally increased our appetite for the business,” Wollan explained. “This acquisition gives us a significant competitive advantage, and they come with a proven technology which has proved its worth – you just need to look at the levels of business they have.
“As a result of its acquisition, that technology will now be made available to thousands of Nordic’s existing customers.”