Infineon Technologies AG will take on 145 software developers from Siemens information and communication mobile, the parent company that originally spun it off in 2000.

The move is a significant one, as the German company has taken recent steps to move from a pure semiconductor manufacturer to a complete system partner, including opening a software center in India.

Infineon will integrate the new employees into its subsidiary Comneon GmbH & Co. OHG, which operates as an independent software development center within its secure mobile solutions group. Currently, the company has some 200 employees working on the development of software for next-generation mobile phones. The additional engineers add to Comneon's existing development team, which is already working for Siemens, among other customers.

The developers acquired from Siemens specialize in hardware-level software solutions for of mobile phone components, or protocol stacks, for current and future Siemens mobile phones for GSM, GPRS and EDGE.