STMicroelectronics Seeks Revival

Giant seen as 'adrift' and 'a survivor'

By Jessica Lipsky,EETimes, SAN FRANCISCO, Jun. 14, 2016 – 

STMicroelectronics has gone through some big changes just in the past five months alone. ST has exited some of its biggest businesses, reported lackluster financial results, and is taking on behemoth NXP for dominance in automotive microcontrollers.

One of Europe's top three semiconductor companies, the French-Italian ST split from a joint mobile venture with Ericsson in 2013 and some say the company has been struggling ever since. In January 2016, ST announced it would lay off up to 1,400 workers as it left the set-top box business, and restructured to three product groups: automotive and discrete, microcontrollers and digital ICs, and analog and MEMS. So far the company has escaped the merger and acquisition fever that swept through the industry over the last 18 months, hitting the microcontroller sector in particular.

"ST is a really sad story actually. In the '90s they were the star of Europe. NXP was falling apart, Infineon was a mess, and now [ST is] sort of adrift," said VLSI Research CEO G. Dan Hutchenson.

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