TI claims savings from shift away from baseband chips

Texas Instruments said its decision to shift from making baseband chips for mobile phones and instead focus on its OMAP application process business has paid off; the company's chief executive said TI is on track to save $700 million annually by the third quarter, of which $200 million is due to its baseband exit.

"Our strategy was to move early, to move aggressively, because the world had changed, but at the same time, to focus on the areas with the best growth going forward," TI CEO Richard Templeton said at the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York, according to Reuters. "We still have a little more to go. But those things are under way."

Templeton said OMAP sales continue with LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson; and, according to EETimes [1], the Palm Pre also uses TI's OMAP processor.

TI posted just $17 million in net profit in the first quarter, down 97 percent a net profit of $662 million in the year-ago quarter. Revenue dropped 36 percent to $2.1 billion, down from $3.3 billion in the first quarter of 2008. In late January, TI cut 3,400 jobs, or 12 percent of its workforce.

For more:
- see this Reuters article [2]

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