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The early-to-middle period of the Silicon Valley semiconductor industry was definitely much more interesting than today's world of oligopolies, company consolid

The early-to-middle period of the Silicon Valley semiconductor industry was definitely much more interesting than today's world of oligopolies, company consolidation, and fabless development. It's quite disappointing to see the big names in the industry have all vanished. A bunch of examples I'm aware of are... * Motorola => Freescale & ON Semiconductor * Fairchild Semiconductor => ON Semiconductor * Signetics => Philips Semiconductors => NXP * Freescale => NXP * National Semiconductor => Texas Instruments * Linear Technology => Analog Devices * Atheros => Qualcomm * Atmel => Microchip Microchip buying Atmel is almost the equivalent of Intel buying AMD in the embedded microcontroller industry. It shouldn't have happened. Where were the regulators? Did they approve the acquisition because they believe the market would still have competition from ARM-based microcontroller makers like ST? I don't know what was the reasoning. Fortunately, Qualcomm didn't end up buying NXP (there was a proposal) and Broadcom didn't end up buying Qualcomm.

zokier 7y ago
> Microchip buying Atmel is almost the equivalent of Intel buying AMD in the embedded microcontroller industry. Not really. Pre-acquisition the were pretty well matched in terms of mcu market share (Microchip was bigger company due wider portfolio), and even post-acquisition they ended up being on the third place after NXP and Renesans. http://www.icinsights.com/news/bulletins/NXP-Acquires-Freescale-Becomes-Top-MCU-Supplier-In-2016/ http://www.icinsights.com/news/bulletins/NXP-Acquires-Freesc...
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago
  Interesting, thanks for pointing out the fact. I was surprised to see the top supplier is NXP, those consolidations have really made NXP a much more powerful company. Back in 2010s, the tops were Renesas, Freescale, Atmel and Microchip [0]. [0] https://www.eetimes.com/despite-challenges-renesas-still-dominant-in-mcus/# https://www.eetimes.com/despite-challenges-renesas-still-dom...
kjs3 7y ago
> Where were the regulators? Doing their job? The "Intel buying AMD" analogy is wildly inaccurate. In 2015 (the last full year before the merger) NXP, Renesas, Samsung and ST all had doubt digit percentage of MCU market shares[1]. And ST makes way more than ARMs; the ST8 for example is still very popular. The regulators care if an acquisition reduces competition, and it's pretty clear that an acquisition that wouldn't even break 20% MCU market share wasn't going to impact that. [1] http://www.icinsights.com/data/articles/documents/970.pdf http://www.icinsights.com/data/articles/documents/970.pdf

zokier 7y ago

> Microchip buying Atmel is almost the equivalent of Intel buying AMD in the embedded microcontroller industry. Not really. Pre-acquisition the were pretty well matched in terms of mcu market share (Microchip was bigger company due wider portfolio), and even post-acquisition they ended up being on the third place after NXP and Renesans. http://www.icinsights.com/news/bulletins/NXP-Acquires-Freescale-Becomes-Top-MCU-Supplier-In-2016/ http://www.icinsights.com/news/bulletins/NXP-Acquires-Freesc...

segfaultbuserr 7y ago
Interesting, thanks for pointing out the fact. I was surprised to see the top supplier is NXP, those consolidations have really made NXP a much more powerful company. Back in 2010s, the tops were Renesas, Freescale, Atmel and Microchip [0]. [0] https://www.eetimes.com/despite-challenges-renesas-still-dominant-in-mcus/# https://www.eetimes.com/despite-challenges-renesas-still-dom...

kjs3 7y ago

> Where were the regulators? Doing their job? The "Intel buying AMD" analogy is wildly inaccurate. In 2015 (the last full year before the merger) NXP, Renesas, Samsung and ST all had doubt digit percentage of MCU market shares[1]. And ST makes way more than ARMs; the ST8 for example is still very popular. The regulators care if an acquisition reduces competition, and it's pretty clear that an acquisition that wouldn't even break 20% MCU market share wasn't going to impact that. [1] http://www.icinsights.com/data/articles/documents/970.pdf http://www.icinsights.com/data/articles/documents/970.pdf