Freescale lacks scale, plans retreat from mobile chips
Nearly four years after its spin-off by Motorola, Freescale Semiconductor could be spinning off itself the cell phone chip business that represented its best-known ties to the mother ship.
Freescale became the subject of the biggest tech buyout in history two years ago, when private equity firms Blackstone Group, Carlyle, Permira and TPG paid $17.6bn for the Texas-based company. Read more
PC and cell phone sales lift tech sector
They may be pre-financial meltdown figures, but the latest stats for worldwide PC and semiconductor sales may provide some comfort in Silicon Valley today.
The research firm iSuppli says HP and Dell continued to increase PC unit shipments in the first half. HP had 13.4m shipments in the second quarter, up 20 per cent on a year ago, while Dell shipped 11.2m units, up 21 per cent. Read more
WirelessHD means widespread boxes
WirelessHD can not only eliminate much of the spaghetti of wires behind your TV set, it can also take away the boxes sitting under it.
I came rather late to this realisation during a demonstration by John LeMoncheck, chief executive of SiBeam, the Silicon Valley company behind the technology. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
