With NXP closing or downsizing four fabs today, you have to ask: Are asset-lite strategies a good idea?
"These companies going asset-lite are basing it all on the price of foundry wafers today", says Malcolm Penn, CEO of Europe's leading semiconductor analysts Future Horizons, "but, in two years' time, the price for foundry wafers will be significantly higher than it is today."
IDMs, which think they can sell their fabs and assume the fabless semiconductor model, may not appreciate that fablessness denotes not just a state of ownership, but a state of mind.
"Just because you've dumped the fabs doesn't make you fabless. It just means you're without fabs. The state of ownership is easily achieved, the state of mind is not," says Penn, "fabless companies start off with high energy, new products and no infrastructure, but some of these old companies trying to downsize have 50 year-old infrastructures creaking and groaning all over the place."
It's a bit like a middle-aged guy flogging his house and declaring himself to be a foot-loose hippy. It's easy to sell the house; it's a lot more difficult to change the mind-set.
Subscribe to this blog's feed