Dear valued customer,

I am excited to let you know that TI has signed a definitive agreement to purchase National Semiconductor, uniting two industry leaders that have a common commitment to solving your analog needs. I want to reinforce TI's commitment to you, our customer, as we merge our two companies.

This acquisition will allow us to address your analog needs with a product portfolio of unmatched breadth and depth. National's 12,000 products plus TI's 30,000 means more performance, power and packaging options when selecting the right ICs for your application. And we'll provide a common set of best-in-class online tools to make the selection and design process easier.

Our combined sales and applications team of 2,500 will be larger than any in the industry so we can provide more customers with greater face-to-face support than ever before.

Our manufacturing operations will offer more capacity to support your growth. TI's fabs and National's available capacity can enable higher production levels.

While both companies will operate independently pending the close, our goal thereafter is to make the integration process as seamless as possible. No requalification of products will be necessary since National's manufacturing sites will continue to be utilized. Part numbers from both companies will remain the same. There will be no obsolescence of products.

I'm excited about what the integration of our two companies will mean for you: an unmatched portfolio to meet your analog needs, an extensive sales and applications network to ease the design process, and manufacturing capacity to support your growth.

You can learn more about the acquisition at www.ti.com/acquire, including answers to frequently asked questions and video messages from TI leaders regarding the acquisition.

Thank you for choosing TI. I look forward to a great future together.

Best regards,

Rich Templeton
Chairman, President and CEO
Texas Instruments

Maybe this means that the help staff will finally know what they're talking about. j/k, but the mode level of knowledge about the hardware that seems to come from TICares seems to be fairly low.