History of Agilent Technologies (Electronic Equipment Industry)

History of Agilent Technologies (Electronic Equipment Industry)

History of Agilent Technologies (Electronic Equipment Industry)Agilent Technologies (NYSE: A), or Agilent, is a company that designs and manufactures electronic and bio-analytical measurement instruments and equipment for measurement and evaluation. Agilent Technologies has a stock market capitalization of over 10 billion USD and the company's headquarters are in Santa Clara, California, in the Silicon Valley region.

In 2001, Agilent Technologies sold its health care and medical products organization to Philips Medical Systems. HP Medical Products had been the second oldest part of Hewlett-Packard, acquired in the 1950s. Only the original founding test and measurement organization was older.

Agilent former headquarters in Palo AltoIn August 2005, Agilent Technologies announced the sale of its Semiconductor Products Group, which produced light-emitting diode, radio frequency and mixed-signal integrated circuits, to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., and Silver Lake Partners. The group operated as a privately run company, Avago Technologies, until August 2009, when it was brought public in an IPO. It continues to operate under the same name as a publicly traded corporation. Agilent also sold its 47% stake in the light-emitting diode manufacturer Lumileds to Philips Electronics for just under $1 billion. Lumileds originally started as Hewlett-Packard's optoelectronics division.

Also in August 2005, Agilent announced a plan to divest its semiconductor test solutions business, composed of both the system-on-chip and memory test market areas. Agilent listed the new company as Verigy, mid-2006 on NASDAQ.

In 2009 Agilent announced the closure of a subsection of its Test & Measurement division. The product lines affected included the automated optical inspection, solder paste inspection, and automated X-ray products [5DX]. In 2004 Agilent reported that it had captured 19% of the US$244 million (excluding Japan) global imaging inspection market. On July 27, 2009 Agilent announced they would buy Varian, Inc., for US$1.5 billion. In November 2009, Agilent sold the N2X product line to IXIA. In February, 2010 Agilent announced the selling of its Network Solutions Division to JDSU for US$162 million.

In 2011, the company increased its life sciences engagement through acquisition of Halo Genomics, based in Uppsala, Sweden, which was involved in next-generation sequencing technology development.
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