Making It More Agile
by Paul McGoldrick
I've never cared for the Agilent name. The split from HP required a
new name, of course, and Agilent was one of those names that was supposed
to catch your attention. The news that Agilent is selling off its semiconductor business, as well as
its part ownership of Lumileds, gives the new operation to chance to choose
something more appropriate to its semiconductor design and manufacturing.
Whether "streamlining" Agilent is a good or bad thing is not for me to say, although the stock market took the news very well. It certainly seems to have worked for Tektronix but our T&MZONE will no doubt investigate that. This sale of the semiconductor business is not the same sort of situation as Tektronix' sale of its fab some years ago to Maxim Integrated Products at a bargain basement price. In that case Tek never made any attempt to turn the fab into a commercial proposition -- it would certainly have failed if it had tried -- but it was able to protect the supply of specialized devices by the creation of Maxtek.
In Agilent's case the semiconductor business is very commercial and they own some parts of the marketplace. In particular to analogZONE, its FBAR products have changed the way vendors think of handset design and the company won well-deserved Product of the Year Awards in both 2002 and 2004.
The $2.6 billion being paid by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Silver Lake Partners is well in line with the product spread compared to the $7.6 billion that TI paid for Burr-Brown and represents what is another major semiconductor launch, but with designs, manufacturing and sales already in place. The nearest comparable deal was the spin-off from Motorola in 1999 of its semiconductor component group to what became -- for heavens sake -- ON Semiconductor. ON then went on to acquire Cherry Semiconductor in 2000. Now that Motorola has spun off the remainder of the semiconductor operations as Freescale they have created yet another branding problem for those spun out.
The Agilent sale creates the opportunity for a new name that means something. Not my specialty to even suggest one, but we hope that whatever they decide to choose it is not just because the URL is available… Beyond the name -- that they will need to brand extremely forcefully -- the management chosen to run this new company will be critical to maintain momentum.
We wish the new company well and look forward to further developments.