Sony has agreed to buy Redmond, WA-based Micronics for an undisclosed amount. Micronics, which was founded in 1996, makes devices for disease diagnosis.
In a statement, Sony says it bought Micronics to accelerate its own R&D. It marks the Japanese firm's first buyout of a medical equipment developer, as Bloomberg notes. Indeed, Sony is looking at ways to expand into the healthcare arena, where its electronics technologies, such as optical discs, might prove useful, explains Chisato Kitsukawa, a spokesman for the company, as quoted by Bloomberg.
Micronics will be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America and work with the Japanese firm's life sciences R&D team to develop new products. The company will continue to operate in Redmond under the current management team.
"As a new member of the Sony family, we at Micronics aim to make full use of Sony's superior consumer-based technologies, product development capabilities and capacity to distribute products globally in the development of Micronics' products. We believe that the powerful combination of Sony's expertise with that of Micronics' will lend itself to a new generation of market-responsive diagnostic products," Micronics President Karen Hedine says in a statement.
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