Polycom funds a buyer after spending over 18 months under private equity firm Siris Capital-- headset maker Plantronics. The asking price? No less than $2 billion, the same amount Siris Capital had bought it for.

Through the acquisition, Plantronics hopes to "become the partner of choice for the communications and collaboration ecosystem," with the "broadest portfolio" of UCC products and services. It also predicts the deal will bring about annual run-rate cost synergies of $75 million within a year after the transaction closes on Q3 2018.

The IBM Think 2018 conference is all about the latest from Big Blue, and one such project comes in a very small package-- a computer the size of a grain of rock salt packing the power of a 1990 x86 chip.

The extra-tiny (1 x 1mm!) computer is part of the "5 in 5," a collection of inventions and technologies IBM Research says "could change our lives in the next 5 years." It consists of a few hundred thousand transistors, an unspecified amount of RAM, a solar cell and an LED-based communications module. IBM adds it should be very cheap to produce, at around 10c apiece.

The Donald Trump presidency flexes its muscle as it blocks the proposed $140 billion acquisition of Qualcomm by Singapore-based Broadcom following concerns will give China the edge in 5G technology development.

The presidential order cites "credible evidence" the acquisition "might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the US." Thus, as the US government orders "the Purchaser and Qualcomm shall immediately and permanently abandon the proposed takeover."

Should it have gone through, the Broadcomm-Qualcomm merger would have been the largest technology deal in history, and created the 3rd biggest chipmaker in the world, following Intel and Samsung. A united Broadcomm-Qualcomm would also control around 65% of the bill-of-materials going into smartphones. The acquisition was technically not wanted by the Qualcomm board, but Broadcom could have simply bought up the shareholders, leading to what on knows as a "hostile takeover."

50-year old Clear-Com continues its birthday celbrations at ISE 2018 with the presentation of the enhanced LQ series of IP interfaces allowing seamless connection with intercom systems over IP.

Being brand-agnostic, the LQ series interfaces use IP to securely connect industry-standard 2-wire and 4-wire intercom systems over IP networks. LQ also interfaces 3rd party SIP/VoIP telephony over existing intercom systems, meaning intercom users can make direct telephone calls over connected SIP-based phone systems.

The Intel Microcode Update Guidance presents an update for Spectre and Meltdown fixes, at least when it comes to a good number of 4th gen Haswell and 5th gen Broadwell platforms.

The updates address Variant 2 of the three Meltdown and Spectre CPU flaws, and should be available for all Haswell and Broadwell chip families except the Broadwell Server EX and Haswell Server EX, which remain in beta. The stable updates are available for Xeon and Intel Core i chips, including Broadwell H 43e-series Core i chips and Broadwell U- and Y-series Core i processors.

Google buys the Xively IoT platform from LogMeIn for $50 million-- an acquisition the search giant describes as a stepping stone into the growing IoT market.

According to Google, the IoT market is set to reach 20 billion connected things by 2020. Xively provides with with a tool allowing device designers to build connectivity directly into the design process while providing a cloud-mobile connection between the end user and connected thing. The result is faster progression from IoT vision to product for clients looking to build a connected business.