Let's Hear It From Austin

However, the Statesman then goes on to qualify this invitation in these words:

'Austinites love to be heard, and we're giving you a bullhorn. We just ask that you keep things civil. Leave out the personal attacks. Do not use profanity, ethnic or racial slurs, or take shots at anyone's sexual orientation or religion. If you can't be nice, we reserve the right to remove your material and ban users who violate our visitors agreement.'

Nice? That sounds like a euphemism for dull.  Especially when you remember Austin is the HQ of Freescale,  and anyone with something interesting and pertinent to say is probably a Freescale employee.

Who wants to play nicey nicey when their livelihood is on the line?

The Statesman article points out that the newly established Sony-Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, NXP joint venture in wireless has close links to four of the  top five handset makers - Nokia, LG, Sony-Ericsson and Samsung.

But 94 per cent of Freescale's wireless chip sales go to the other top five player -  Motorola - and Motorola's handset sales are declining.

Motorola's business may not represent sufficient sales volume (Freescale's total wireless sales were $1.2 billion last year down 18 per cent on 2006) to support Freescale's engineering effort for next generation wireless R&D.

And what makes things worse for Freescale is that Qualcomm and Texas Instruments are making major efforts to get to be significant suppliers to Motorola.

It is speculated that Freescale may be increasingly confined to less advanced, less profitable, wireless ICs in its business with Motorola.

The narrowness of the options available to Freescale in wireless, makes people think that new boss Rich Beyer will try to sell it.

Obviously TI and Qualcomm are possible buyers in the US, and Infineon in Europe. Although Infineon couldn't afford to buy Freescale, it may be able to form a viable alliance with it.

Failing those options, the possibility is that Freescale may be sold to an Asian company but, if it is, say analysts, it will have to be sold cheaply.

None of this can be very encouraging for Freescale's engineers who have been royally screwed around for the best part of a decade by the re-structurings associated with divestment of the semiconductor division from Motorola, by further disruptions associated with the Freescale IPO, and with further disruption associated with being owned by a consortium of finance-driven private equity companies.

If they want to say some less than nice things about their situation on the Austin Statesman's web-site, I think they're jolly well entitled to.