Mobile technology and chip design company Qualcomm confirmed on Thursday that it planned to buy NXP Semiconductor for an enterprise value of £38 billion ($47 billion)—eclipsing SoftBank's recent mega bucks acquisition of British chip designer ARM Holdings.

It told Wall Street that the combined company expected to report annual sales of £24 billion ($30 billion), with plans to bullishly elbow its way into "leadership positions across mobile, automotive, IoT, security, RF [radio frequency], and networking."

Dutch NXP, which co-invented near-field communication (NFC), has 44,000 employees on its books worldwide. Its controllers are heavily used in Android and Apple smartphones. The planned merger comes a year after NXP bought Freescale Semiconductor for £9.25 billion.

In late September, it was reported that Qualcomm was looking to swoop on NXP.

Qualcomm said it would acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of NXP for $110 per share in cash. The transaction—which is subject to regulatory approval—isn't expected to close until the end of 2017.

NXP has pushed back its third quarter results by an hour, presumably to give investors a bit of breathing space about its proposed marriage to Qualcomm.