Secure IoT MCUs drive Freescale-NXP

The merger's new CEO outlines vision for a smarter world.

The future of Freescale and NXP is in connecting and securing the Internet of Things, with a major focus on automotive. The CEOs of both companies outlined their collective vision for the merger during a keynote at the Freescale Technology Forum in June.

The merger will create the fifth largest nonmemory semiconductor company, NXP CEO Rick Clemmer said. The goal is not to generate massive cost savings, but to provide more well-rounded options for IoT customers.

Leading semiconductor companies—Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom/Avago and TI—all have narrowly concentrated on strategies on microcontrollers, communications and analog. This leaves a prime area for the new NXP to take on.

"No companies are focused on creating secure connections and infrastructure for a smarter world," Freescale CEO Gregg Lowe said. "Clearly, if we do that successfully, and we can do that very rapidly, we can move up in succession."

Clemmer will be the new company's CEO and made clear that NXP-Freescale wants to be 50 percent more successful than the second top company developing microcontrollers for IoT. The NXP CEO hopes to combine its security expertise and success in automotive infotainment with Freescale's broad microcontroller portfolio to create a wide range of chips for connected devices, 70 percent of which do not have any form of security, Lowe noted.

To read the full article, please go to EETimes.

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