Real Kato Blog: Analysis: Motorola's Exit from the Semiconductor Business

Motorola announced that it's spinning off its semiconductor product sector into a separate business. What does this mean for the future of Motorola microprocessors?

Many ex-Motorola workers would describe their employers as a bunch of pointy-haired idiots right out of Dilbert. Apparently, internal corporate politics dominated the decision-making process, and logic and reason flew right out the window. Longtime Apple devotees can remember when Motorola's IT department standardized on computers running Pentium processors from archrival Intel. Could it be that Motorola was angry at Apple for killing off its clone business? Talk about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.

So now, the SPS will be a separate entity. Presumably this leaves the remainder of Motorola (and their IT departments) a guilt-free way of switching to ARM and Intel processors, washing their hands of the slow death of their disavowed sibling.

Or so the theory goes. Perhaps, a separate SPS will be revitalized, free of the mind-numbing corporate bureaucracy that held it back for all these years. Perhaps it will learn how to leverage its enormous strengths in the embedded processor market. Perhaps it will remember that at one time, it was at the forefront of processor innovation.

On the other hand, perhaps that's too rosy a view. I suspect that the real end-result will be that Motorola's SPS assets will be chopped up and fed to companies eager to get its technology without having to absorb its management. Apple, IBM, Intel, AMD, TI: Get out your knives and forks, and get ready to bid low.

Permalink 1 Comment

Posted by Ken in: techwatch

Comments

Comment #1 from wle (Guest)
2005 Jul 13 - 6:08 pm : #

perhaps they want the semiconductor division to fare
as badly as agere, the semiconductor splitoff from
lucent..

wle.

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