There was once a company which had a division which grew to become No.1 in a new product area, but then came to the conclusion that its market was bound to become commoditised.
It spent the proceeds of the sale on diversifying into high-performance analogue.
The company which bought the business was taken over shortly afterwards.
The company which diversified into high-performance analogue, stayed independent, increasing its revenues by 50% over the subsequent five years.
MORAL: Nothing Lasts Forever
Intersil?
Yes indeed, Anonymous, Intersil.
I reckon this was Silicon Labs. They have a history of selling out at the right time. They did it again with their Aero GSM chipset which they sold to NXP
No, sorry ,Chris G, it was Intersil flogging off their Wifi business.
David maybe you should follow this up with a "start-ups that sold out at the top" blog.
I seem to remember that AMCC did an excellent job selling stock right at the top and since we are talking about WiFi Radiata did a heck of a job selling out to Cisco, just before the wiFi market imploded.
I think that would be a very good idea, Robert. It could be coupled with well-timed IPOs. Remember the 2000 semiconductor IPOs? Infineon was worth €45 billion on the day of its IPO, ARM was worth $9 billion after its IPO, Bookham jumped straight into the FTSE100 after its IPO. Timing, it seems, is everything.
Mostek sold out in '79 at $62 to UTC (Gould lost the bidding war). In '85 Mostek closed and was bought for a pittance by Thomson.
But today, "MostekLives! In our Hearts & Memories of the People Who Were Mostek!" There's still a big annual reunion each year in Dallas in February.
Thanks for that Bill, it seems only right and fitting that Mostek should be remembered. A great company. And I suppose something of the Mostek gene pool lives on in Micron where Ward Parkinson and Doug Pitman took their DRAM design team.