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conexant

Who profits from semiconductor spin-offs?

We've seen a horde of semiconductor spin-offs these past 10 years. Why all of a sudden? Companies are refocusing on core competencies and unloading unprofitable, sometimes debt-ridden businesses. There's also an ongoing and apparently interminable disaggregation of the electronics industry.

The latest trend is for semiconductor companies to spin off product or application-focused companies. I'm not sure that's always the right move, but you'll see a lot more of that in the coming years.

Here are 10 notable chip divestitures. A bunch of them went public during the tech bubble--exciting for them, not so much for long-term investors who, for the most part, took it in the shorts.… Read more

Ten irrelevant technology companies

The great corporate graveyard is filled with hundreds, maybe thousands, of technology companies that managed to go public and then fizzled. Still, most of them weren't going anywhere and never should have gone public to begin with.

But venture capitalists funded them, investment banks underwrote them, analysts wrote glowing reports about them, and you and I bought into it, gullible lemmings that we are. Sorry for being such a negatron; that's just the way it is.

Anyway, what's different about these 10 companies is that they were once important, maybe even exciting. And now, for one reason or another, they're fading slowly and tediously into obscurity. Like people, most companies go out, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Depressing, isn't it?… Read more

Austin chip exec to take over Conexant

A longtime executive in Austin's chip industry has been hired as CEO and chairman of California chipmaker Conexant.

According to an article in Tuesday's Austin American-Statesman, Daniel Artusi spent 24 years as an exec at Motorola's Austin chip sites before becoming CEO of Silicon Laboratories. He's been CEO for the past two years at ColdWatt, a start-up in Austin that creates energy-saving systems for the chip and communications industries.

Artusi, who was born and raised in Argentina, isn't exactly walking into a garden party at Conexant. The broadband chipmaker, which is based in Newport Beach, … Read more