In an effort to build chips which customers want rather than those it thinks they need – which it hopes will put its semiconductor business back on to a healthy growth path during a time of a general decline in the worldwide semiconductor business – Motorola Inc and has cut its semiconductor products group into four industry-focused operations plus a components operation. It claims it will be able to get products into customers hands within 30 days rather than three months. Responsibility for developing each of Motorola’s core instruction set architectures, including PowerPC and 680×0, will be allocated to the most appropriate group and will be made public in about four weeks time, according to a spokesperson. Motorola has already said it does not expect see a year-on-year growth reflected in its $7.9bn semiconductor business reflected in its bottom line until later this year based upon the assumption the worldwide semiconductor industry will grow by about 10% over the year, and even then margins will be restricted to single digit (CI No 3,076). Sales of semiconductor products in the company’s most recent quarter were off 16% from the same period in 1996. Motorola has installed EVP Hector Ruiz as president of the semiconductor sector following the retirement of Tommy George. Ruiz was previously head of the company’s pager business and before that chief of R&D. The four market-based groups are the Consumer Systems Group run by Carlos Genardini; Networking & Computing Systems Group headed by Bertrand Cambou; Transportation Systems Group lead by CD Tam; and the Wireless Subscriber Systems Group headed by Fred Shlapak. The Semiconductor Components Group includes the group’s discrete and integrated circuits and is lead by Steve Hanson and Greg Williams. The consumer group is based in Hong Kong; the components in Geneva. The others are in Austin, Texas. It’s the first time Motorola has put any of its semiconductor responsibilities outside of the US. The group is also reorganizing across geographic lines, creating Asia-Pacific and Japan, European and Americas organizations. The company says there will be no job losses as a result.
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