Where have all the big-ticket tech acquisitions gone?

There has been only one technology deal topping $5 billion this year — Intel Corp.'s $14 billion takeover of Mobileye in March. Last year, a dozen technology deals of more than $5 billion were announced. In 2015, there were seven.

"It is rather surprising, simply because over the past two years, which were watershed years, in 2015 and 2016, we saw so many," Rick Climan, Hogan Lovells M&A partner, said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. "But we're coming off two blockbuster years and there's bound to be a falloff. 2015 and 2016 were monster years for tech, perhaps even aberrational years with the benefit of hindsight."

It's possible companies are simply taking a break, returning to a calmer time. Only two tech deals bigger than $5 billion were struck in 2014. Buyers need to digest their targets, Climan said. There are also fewer strategically logical transactions possible that wouldn't face antitrust hurdles.

With a few months to go in the year, there's still time for deals to come together. Toshiba is in talks to sell its memory chip business. Parthenon-EY, one of the business units of what was formerly called Ernst & Young, is working on two large technology deals that could be announced before 2017 ends, according to Barak Ravid, the consulting firm's managing director and co-head of technology.

Global technology merger- and-acquisition volume is down 54 percent from a year ago, at $106 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The number of publicly announced deals of $1 billion or less are actually ahead of last year's pace by 2.7 percent. The larger deals have fallen precipitously.

With interest rates low and trillions of dollars in cash on balance sheets, technology companies should be well positioned to do large deals. The Nasdaq is up more than 19 percent this year, and more deals get done when equity markets rise.

But not all technology companies are bred to buy, said Bill Choe, a White & Case technology M&A partner.

"If you're already investing organically, it may make more sense to reinvest earnings into research and development instead of M&A," Choe said. "There may not be the right large target out there that's available."

Virtual reality and artificial intelligence may be the next drivers of tech M&A, said Climan, although the size of the target companies have remained small.

Sherman writes for Bloomberg News.