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Monday, March 17, 2008

Explosive surprise from Apple’s nano

By Steve Pounds | Monday, March 17, 2008, 10:03 PM

Beware, exploding Nanos?

Oops. The Apple marketing machine isn’t going to like> that. The popular MP3 players are the quintessential mobile music player.

Stylish, cute and very portable, the Nano is in the shoulder bag of most teens. It’s right next to the cellphone.

But there are plenty of other players ready to step in, should the Nano, well, self destruct. A photo on Engadget.com shows an older model of the Nano charred and wasted.

Japanese authorities didn’t take kindly the explosive surprise. They’ve asked, make that ordered, Apple to investigate.

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New Freescale CEO tells employees it’s time to start winning

By Kirk Ladendorf | Monday, March 17, 2008, 12:26 PM

Rich Beyer took over as chairman and CEO of Freescale Semiconductor Inc. today and he sent a message to the company’s 24,000 worldwide employees.

Beyer, who comes from California’s Intersil Corp., takes over from Michel Mayer, who announced his resignation Feb. 8.

Mayer, who headed the company since its spin-off from Motorola Inc. in 2004, will remain as an adviser to the company until May. Freescale employs about 5,000 people in Austin.

Here’s what Beyer told his new employees:

Today is my first official day as your Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. I want to express my appreciation to Michel for his significant contributions over the past four years and for the support he is providing me during this transition at Freescale. I also wish to thank the Board of Directors for their confidence by entrusting me with the responsibilities of leading this fine company.

I joined Freescale because I believe we can grow and I believe we can win. This is truly a great company with a heritage of which we can all be proud. We are known across the globe in virtually every market segment. We are on solid financial footing, enjoy leadership positions in superb, high-growth markets, and have a customer base that wants us to succeed.

Perhaps most importantly, we have a strong management team and 24,000 people who want to work together and achieve even greater success.

My management style is direct and involved. I started in sales and marketing working directly with customers, and it made an indelible impression on the importance of putting the customer at the heart of everything we do. In my 30 years of semiconductor and systems experience, I have found putting the customer first is the best way to achieve sustainable customer advantage.

I want one team working toward one common goal, and it should come as no surprise that profitable revenue growth is our primary objective.

I had the opportunity to join our Technical Sales Summit earlier this month and was truly impressed by the quality of the people, their candor and passion. A key theme of every conversation was the importance of leveraging and cross-selling the entire Freescale portfolio, a theme you will continue to hear in the days and weeks to follow.

In my first 100 days, I plan to be on the road meeting with our top customers and talking with employees around the world. I will conduct formal and informal employee meetings and you should expect to see me in your work area. I really believe in the concept of management by walking around. But, please don’t wait for me to come to you. If you have a question or suggestion, please e-mail me. You have my commitment to personally read and respond to all inputs.

I plan to do an in-depth review of each of our product families within the first 30 days. I will also evaluate our position in each of our markets - networking, wireless, transportation, consumer and industrial. And I will get a thorough assessment of each of our geographic regions, operations, technology development programs and all supporting business functions.

I am already convinced that we are building a global brand that is extremely compelling. There are very few semiconductor companies, if any, that are as well positioned to meet the growing market demands for energy-efficient and constant-connectivity solutions.

I am proud to be part of Freescale, and you should be proud of what you have accomplished to date. Together, we will write the next chapter in the Freescale story.

It starts today. Let’s go win.

Rich

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