Freescale is looking to its strengths: automotive microcontrollers, power management, sensors, communications processors for networking, and broadband and Internet access, Rich Beyer, Chairman and CEO of Freescale, told the Freescale Technology Forum in Paris this week.

A key part of Beyer's strategy since taking over from Michel Mayer six months ago is to increase the quality levels.

"We're increasing quality by 43 per cent year-on-year, and all new products are introduced with zero defects", said Beyer, "in 2007, we had 7.1 defects per million parts. This year we have brought that down to 5 defects per million. Every year we plan to reduce that number. Eighty per cent of our products have zero defects."

"Quality extends to the supply chain", added Beyer, "we're significantly increasing the oversight we give to our suppliers. We make sure they have the same quality of process as we do."

A third aspiration is 'best in class support'. "We need to understand the lead times in each business unit and understand customers' expectations of lead-times," said Beyer.

Beyer sees three mega-trends for the semiconductor industry. First: "The convergence of user generated content and the insatiable demand for bandwidth": second, health and safety; third, going green."

"Freescale is uniquely positioned to be the leader in these markets", said Beyer. The 'net effect' is the move to social networking, constant connectivity and high speed Internet driven by video-sharing sites and user generated content. As voice revenues decline, network operators will be looking to these sorts of data services which will generate 25 per cent of operators' revenues, or Euros 173bn, by 2012.

LTE will be a key technology for this in providing data rate 50 times faster than 3G, according to Beyer.

"Freescale is the only company to demonstrate LTE from handset to handset", said Beyer, "we expect to be in final trials with operators and infrastructure providers in the early part of 2009, and deploy later in 2009."

In the health and safety arena, semiconductor technology will be essential to bring down the cost of monitoring patients with heart-rate monitors, which can transmit data via cellphones to health-care professionals.

Large machines required for electro-cardiogram machines have been reduced by Freescale to 'ECG on a chip', and products based on it are on the market.

In the green arena, Beyer said efficient motor control can reduce power by 30 per cent. In automotives, it has produced an application which cuts off the engine when the car is not in motion and re-starts it when it moves off to provide a big reduction in fuel use. This is being used by Valeo, the automotive sub-system supplier.

See also: Electronics Weekly's Focus on Wireless, a roundup of content related to wireless communications.

See also: Mannerisms, the blog of David Manners. Updated twice daily, it's the distinctive, entertaining, authoritative and never dull commentary on the semiconductor industry, from someone who knows. Sign up for the Mannerisms eNewsletter.

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