Texas Instruments agrees to buy Burr-Brown Corp. for $7.6 billion

DALLAS (Bloomberg) — Texas Instruments Inc., the biggest maker of semiconductors for cellular phones, agreed to buy electronic-components maker Burr-Brown Corp. for $7.6 billion, the biggest acquisition in the company's 70-year history.

The acquisition will bolster Texas Instruments' lead in the $22 billion market for analog chips. The company already controls 11 percent of the analog market, and its chips are used in about 65 percent of the world's cell phones. Burr-Brown's analog chips amplify a cell phone's signal and convert it into the digital computer language used by the device's central processor.