WASHINGTON, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Skyworks Solutions ( SWKS )

CEO Phil Brace sees a path toward chips that would help

smartphones have faster wireless data connections while

consuming less power by combining his firm's technologies with

those from smaller Qorvo ( QRVO ), he told Reuters in an

interview on Wednesday.

Skyworks on Tuesday announced a cash and stock offer to buy the

smaller Qorvo ( QRVO ) that values Qorvo ( QRVO ) at $9.76 billion. The two

companies are both major suppliers to Apple ( AAPL ) and other

smartphone firms, where their chips help to handle the radio

signals that carry wireless data.

While the two firms do have some areas of competition, Brace

said the challenge both face is the fast-growing amount of data

that has to be processed on phones and shuffled back and forth

between phones and data centers to power AI applications such as

chatbots. Brace said that some Qorvo ( QRVO ) technologies, such as

antenna tuners, could be combined with Skyworks products such as

filters to create combined chips that would consume less power -

which in turn frees up a smartphone's limited battery to handle

more AI work.

"All of that processing in those (AI) data centers

ultimately has to get out to people, and the way it's going to

get up to the people at the end is wirelessly," Brace told

Reuters in an interview. "Once we start putting some more AI and

inference and things at the edge (on phones) that's going to

require increasing demands on the (radio frequency chips) to be

able to transmit and receive more data and do so in a lower

power way."

Skyworks expects the deal to close in early 2027, and it

will need approval from regulators in China. Brace said he

believes the company can win approval for the deal because the

combined company's products could help Chinese handset makers

compete in the premium segment of the smartphone market.

"Some of those phone manufacturers still have and want

premium phones to compete with some of our other customers, and

having that high level of technology and high-level integration

is also something I think they're going to want," Brace said.