Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. was an American

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...

manufacturer. It was created by the divestiture of the Semiconductor Products Sector of

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

in 2004. Freescale focused their

integrated circuit An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...

products on the automotive, embedded and communications markets. It was bought by a private investor group in 2006, and subsequently merged with

NXP Semiconductors NXP Semiconductors N.V. is a Dutch semiconductor manufacturing and design company with headquarters in Eindhoven, Netherlands. It is the third largest European semiconductor company by market capitalization as of 2024. The company employs approx ...

in 2015.

History

Divestiture from Motorola and first IPO

As of 2003, Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector earned US$5.0

billion Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions: * 1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is now the most common sense of the word in all varieties of ...

in semiconductor sales in 2002 (out of US$27 billion sales for all of Motorola). Motorola announced that their semiconductor division would be divested on October 6, 2003 and would have a temporary name ''SPS Spinco''. Freescale completed its

Initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

(IPO) on July 16, 2004, at a price of US$13. In its announcement, it estimated the stock price to be US$17.50- 19.50 but following a cooling of the market towards tech stocks, it lowered its price to US$13. Existing shareholders of Motorola stock received 0.110415 shares of Freescale stock for every share of Motorola stock as a dividend which was distributed on December 2, 2004.

Buyout

On September 15, 2006, Freescale agreed to accept a

buyout In finance, a buyout is an investment transaction by which the ownership equity, or a controlling interest of a company, or a majority share of the capital stock of the company is acquired. The acquirer thereby "buys out" the present equity holde ...

for the sum of $17.6 billion ($40 per share) by a consortium led by the

Blackstone Group Blackstone Inc. is an American alternative investment management company based in New York City. It was founded in 1985 as a mergers and acquisitions firm by Peter Peterson and Stephen Schwarzman, who had previously worked together at Lehman ...

. Share prices of $13 at the July 2004 IPO had risen to $39.35 in afterhours trading that Friday when the news, rumored that week, broke. A special shareholders meeting on November 13, 2006, voted to accept the buyout offer. The purchase, which closed on December 1, 2006, is reportedly the largest private buyout of a technology company and one of the ten largest buyouts of all time.

Second IPO

Freescale filed to go public again on February 11, 2011, and completed its IPO on May 26, 2011. Freescale was traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the

ticker symbol A ticker symbol or stock symbol is an abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded Share (finance), shares of a particular stock or Security (finance), security on a particular stock exchange. Ticker symbols are arrangements of symbols ...

FSL. At the time of the IPO, the company had $7.6 billion in outstanding debt on its books, and the company was investigated for misconduct related to this IPO.

MH370

On March 8, 2014, Freescale announced that 20 of its employees were lost aboard

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370/MAS370) was an international passenger flight operated by Malaysia Airlines that disappeared from radar on 8 March 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia to its planned de ...

Merger

A merger agreement with

was announced in March 2015, to form a billion company. The acquisition closed on December 7, 2015.

Products

Automotive

MEMS MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems) is the technology of microscopic devices incorporating both electronic and moving parts. MEMS are made up of components between 1 and 100 micrometres in size (i.e., 0.001 to 0.1 mm), and MEMS devices ...

-based

satellite A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...

accelerometer An accelerometer is a device that measures the proper acceleration of an object. Proper acceleration is the acceleration (the rate of change (mathematics), rate of change of velocity) of the object relative to an observer who is in free fall (tha ...

, an

Airbag An airbag is a vehicle occupant-restraint system using a bag designed to inflate in milliseconds during a collision and then deflate afterwards. It consists of an airbag cushion, a flexible fabric bag, an inflation module, and an impact sensor. ...

System Basis Chip as well as a dual-axis SPI inertial sensor designed for use with the

PSI5 {{Short description, Digital interface for sensors Peripheral Sensor Interface (PSI5) is a digital interface for sensors. PSI5 is a two-wire interface, used to connect peripheral sensors to electronic control units in automotive electronics. Both p ...

open standard airbag systems were announced in 2011. A microcontroller meant to be used in

anti-lock braking system An anti-lock braking system (ABS) is a Automotive safety, safety anti-Skid (automobile), skid Brake, braking system used on aircraft and on land motor vehicle, vehicles, such as cars, motorcycles, trucks, and buses. ABS operates by preventing t ...

s as well as electronic

power steering Power steering is a system for reducing a driver's effort to turn a steering wheel of a motor vehicle, by using a power source to assist steering. Hydraulic or electric actuators add controlled energy to the steering mechanism, so the driver can ...

applications was released in 2008. Freescale also produced pressure sensors for

engine management system An engine control unit (ECU), also called an engine control module (ECM), is a device that controls various subsystems of an internal combustion engine. Systems commonly controlled by an ECU include the fuel injection and ignition systems. The ...

s. Freescale's SMARTMOS analog portfolio provides power actuation and multiple switch detect interface family ICs and system basis chips for hybrid vehicles. In November 2008 Freescale announced that the company would collaborate with

McLaren Electronic Systems McLaren Applied is a British technology and products company. Capabilities include design, development, manufacture and test of electronic, mechanical, electrical and software products. The company is focused on four industries: motorsport, au ...

to further develop its KERS system for

McLaren McLaren Racing Limited ( ) is a British auto racing, motor racing team based at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, Surrey, England. The team is a subsidiary of the McLaren Group, which owns a majority of the team. McLaren is best known a ...

Formula One Formula One (F1) is the highest class of worldwide racing for open-wheel single-seater formula Auto racing, racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The FIA Formula One World Championship has been one ...

car from 2010 onwards. Both parties believed this collaboration would improve McLaren's KERS system and help the system filter down to road car technology.

Other business units

Besides the MSG (Micro-controller Solutions Group), Freescale's other major semiconductor businesses are the NMG (Networking and Multimedia Group) as well as RASG (RF, Analog and Sensors Group). Freescale, under the guidance of IBM, had also been a source of

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

microprocessors (ICs) for

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...

PowerBook The PowerBook (known as Macintosh PowerBook before 1997) is a family of Macintosh-type laptop computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from 1991 to 2006. It was targeted at the professional market; in 1999, the line was suppl ...

s and

Mac mini Mac Mini (stylized as Mac mini) is a small form factor (desktop and motherboard), small form factor desktop computer developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is one of the company's four current Mac (computer), Mac desktop computers, positioned ...

products until the

Mac transition to Intel processors The Mac transition to Intel processors was the process of switching the central processing units (CPUs) of Apple's line of Mac and Xserve computers from PowerPC processors over to Intel's x86-64 processors. The change was announced at the 200 ...

in 2006. They joined Power.org in 2006 as a founding member to develop and promote the use of

Power Architecture Power ISA is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) currently developed by the OpenPOWER Foundation, led by IBM. It was originally developed by IBM and the now-defunct Power.org industry group. Power ISA ...

. DragonBall is a low power derivation of the earlier

Motorola 68000 family The Motorola 68000 series (also known as 680x0, m68000, m68k, or 68k) is a family of 32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and w ...

microprocessors. Freescale also has a portfolio of

Digital Signal Processor A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor chip, with its architecture optimized for the operational needs of digital signal processing. DSPs are fabricated on metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit chips. ...

(DSP) products based on StarCore Technology. Freescale's DSPs are being used in Broadband Wireless,

Voice Over IP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as ...

and video infrastructure systems.

Litigation

Freescale was sued by Marvell Semiconductor for infringing seven patents. The case was settled in 2015. Freescale lost a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Tessera Corporation and was forced to pay an undisclosed amount as part of the settlement.Tessera and Freescale Settle Litigation
Business Wire (August 27, 2013). Retrieved on 2019-04-26.

References

External links

2015 Archive of Corporate website
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