Much has been made of the troubles at Motorola Inc., but there's another victim hurt by its lack of a WOW handset its former chip division, Freescale Semiconductor Holdings I Ltd. The chip firm reported second-quarter net sales Thursday of $1.38 billion, down from $1.6 billion the previous year. Michel Mayer, chairman and CEO, acknowledges, “The continued weakness in unit sales and demand from our largest wireless customer impacted our results."

Freescale's largest customer is its former parent company, which shows that nepotism can have its downside. Moto spun out Freescale in December 2004 through an initial public offering, and last year Blackstone Group LP, Carlyle Group, Permira and TPG paid $18.8 billion for the company. Perhaps employees at those firms should ditch their Research In Motion Ltd. BlackBerries in favor of the Moto Q. — Stacey Higginbotham

See July 19 post from Tech Confidential
See Freescale second-quarter results release (.pdf)
See September 2006 story from TheDeal.com

Tags: Motorola Inc. , Freescale Semiconductor Holdings I Ltd., smart phones