Freescale bought for $17.6B

[Bob Russell]

Freescale Semiconductor is a major supplier of processors for mobile phones. According to LinuxDevices, "Freescale ranked 368th on the Fortune 500 last year, with sales of $5.8B. Another well-known semi-conductor vendor, AMD, ranked 367th."

The company was bought by a consortium of buyers, "led by The Blackstone Group, and includes The Carlyle Group, Permira Funds, and Texas Pacific Group." This would seem to be good news because it continues the competition for providing mobile computing processors, rather than consolidating them with another big producer.

Interestingly, Palmsource has them listed as a Palm OS Ready partner. Their description of Freescale say that "Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. (NYSE:FSL, FSL.B) is a global leader in the design and manufacture of embedded semiconductors for the automotive, consumer, industrial, networking and wireless markets."

It will be interesting to see what industry analysts have to say about any potential impact on smart phones, handhelds or e-reader devices.