Texas Instruments has announced that it intends to acquire National Semiconductor for $25 per share, or about an 80 percent premium over the $14 and change at which NYSE:NSM was trading at earlier in the day. The combined entity will be a major force in the analog semiconductor market, as TI will add NatSemi's analog business to its own, which was already considerable.

"Our two companies complement each other very well," said Don Macleod, National's chief executive officer, in a statement. "TI has much greater scale in the marketplace, with its larger portfolio of products and its large global sales force. This provides a platform to enhance National's strong and highly profitable analog capability, power management in particular, leading to meaningful growth."

TI will no doubt combine National Semi's power management ICs with its own digital signal processors and application processors to offer more end-to-end solutions for mobiles and other embedded devices.

TI is going to some lengths to assure NatSemi's customers that the company's goal is "a seamless, hassle-free merger for the customer."

"We want you to know you will be able to find the parts from National that you have come to rely on and you will not have to go to a lot of extra work requalifying products from different manufacturing plants," TI said in a blog post. "We will continue to use National’s fabs so no requalification will be required."

Speaking of NatSemi's fabs, the expansion of analog production capacity that TI is getting with this purchase is a major part of the deal. TI has been on an analog fab buying kick, and this NatSemi purchase is the latest move in that direction.