Well Mr. C... we've got 2 days left to get to 2.60.
That's not going to be easy... unless of course the MM/MoMo team knows "something" they think might turn into a big thing.
Personally... I think TI would not be cutting off its base station nose, if it didn't have a plan for saving its face somewhere else. And from everything I have seen that somewhere is going to be analog... involve new markets... and make use of F-RAM as an embedded memory.
I still don't know the application drivers but I suspect F-RAM's relative EMI immunity and great range of low density serial circuit designs will put it in the right place at the right time for the AC and AC/DC markets.
There's actually quite a bit going on in the semi biz during this down turn. BRCM posted sterling numbers yesterday while QCOM has delayed their report to a post election 11/6, presumably to avoid having a good report drown in the panic of the current market. Samsung, Toshiba, Spansion, SanDisk, QI, IFX, MU, AMD, STM, and L'Intel are all looking for a way out of the commodity memory morass. By 2010 the players at the poker table are going to have very different faces... if not entirely new identities.
My guess is that the cell base station business is rapidly becoming the new killing commodity and TI is getting out just as they did with the DRAM business. TI was in the low cost, high volume end of the market. I suspect the high end of the cell phone market where QCOM lives will see a different path to commoditization. There are many competitors going into the smartphone business where there are limited buyers. The pressure is on a short product life cycle there and an unending search for "must have" hardware improvements. That will be a tough road to hoe but is more akin to the PC market than the DRAM market. It will be interesting to see who buys the TI base station SoC's... and whether they speak Chinese or Hindi as a native tongue. If so I would expect the buyer to do very well.
As far as RMTR is concerned the only M&A activity I can see that makes any sense would be a merger of Symetrix and RMTR interests. But it makes too much "sense" to happen now. My guess is that it won't be "compelling" unless and until one or both of them reach revenues north of $25M/quarter.
But that's just my 2 cents and is based on an assumption that Symetrix will have a nice slice of a hypothetical "Fe-NAND" business. I mean... assuming they can get Japan, Inc, to buy into said Fe-NAND "solution" to solve their FLASH ASP mess before the end of 2010.
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