Freescale Semiconductor Bought Out by Blackstone for $17.6B

Freescale Semiconductor has been bought out by a group of investors led by Blackstone:
for U.S. $17.6B

http://microcontroller.com/news/freescale_buyout.asp

I'm at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston and I've had mixed reviews on my
analysis. I'm just sayin' what I think...

Regards,

Bill Giovino
Executive Editor
http://Microcontroller.com

Bill Giovino wrote:

> http://microcontroller.com/news/freescale_buyout.asp

I'd change a few small things.

"they have ceded dominance of the 8-bit marketplace to Microchip", I'd
insert the words "non-automotive" in front of "8-bit".

The following is probably accurate:

"their dominance as the lead Automotive chip supplier is being
threatened by ST Microelectronics"

but I'd widen the scope because there are many vendors pushing into the
automotive sector. Even low-end 32 bit Arm chips are competing for this
niche now that their price has come down dramatically in recent years.
Freescale's 16 bit 68hc12/9s12 line is their key automotive line, and
its pricing structure is currently too high to sustain the competition.
Even Freescale seems to see the handwriting on the wall for their 16
bit line because they no longer advertise this line. They are focusing
on the 8 and 32 bit segments, and this strategy is largely based on
trying to get more people to use Coldfire. Their new RS08 chips are an
attempt to compete with Microchip on the low end.

Your analysis about what will likely happen after the merger is
dead-on. I couldn't have said it better. This is, of course, not
particularly good news for users of Freescale chips.

Another problem with this kind of purchase is that we may not have
access to any numbers about how well they do in the future, since
they'll no longer be a separate public entity (if I understand this
correctly). So they might tank in the future and it would be difficult
for us to know just how badly they're doing. The same is true of
Philips Semiconductor, now NXP.

By the way, Bill, have you considered starting a blog that could record
your thoughts on an ongoing basis? This would make it easy to separate
opinion from news and would be less likely to cause confusion (I'm not
confused, but in this day of political correctness I could see
hysterical people babbling on about this kind of thing).

Eric

Eric wrote:
> Bill Giovino wrote:
> 
> 
>>http://microcontroller.com/news/freescale_buyout.asp
> 
> 
> I'd change a few small things.
> 
> "they have ceded dominance of the 8-bit marketplace to Microchip", I'd
> insert the words "non-automotive" in front of "8-bit".

..and change to 'dominance by unit volume' - the Revenue stream, and ASP 
of Freescale's 8 bit uC is well above Microchip's.
Freescale would also be well ahead in uC Pins, and uC Memory yardsticks.

-jg

"Jim Granville" wrote...
> Eric wrote:
> > Bill Giovino wrote:
> >
> >
> >> http://microcontroller.com/news/freescale_buyout.asp
> >
> >
> > I'd change a few small things.
> >
> > "they have ceded dominance of the 8-bit marketplace to Microchip", I'd
> > insert the words "non-automotive" in front of "8-bit".

Just changed it, thanks for the catch!

>
> ..and change to 'dominance by unit volume' - the Revenue stream, and ASP
> of Freescale's 8 bit uC is well above Microchip's.
> Freescale would also be well ahead in uC Pins, and uC Memory yardsticks.
> -jg

Let me take a closer look at this. Keep in mind that this is a business article and not
one of my market analysis, so let me see how I can address this and still keep the
article's business context.

Regards,

Bill Giovino
Executive Editor
http://Microcontroller.com