Ericsson follows Broadcom to modem Mordor Ericsson, once the major manufacturer of modems, is planning to leave the business. The move will see 1,000 redundancies and 500 people moving to other Ericsson projects, such as small cells. In February 2009, Ericsson entered into a joint venture with ST-Microelectronics – itself a merger of SGS-Thomson and NXP – in a bid to …
"Add ARM and others, the UK does pretty well."
In IP origination yes. But it doesn't make for many jobs, and the ones it does create tend to be high skills jobs, rather than the mid-low skills jobs the economy could do with. There's also a question as to how enduring the wealth creation is given that so many of the IP startups get acquired and within a few months or years they get shuttered. I saw Wolfson were being bought the other month, was it, so there's another UK tech company slowly heading for the Tech graveyard.
I suppose at least Wolfson are Scottish, and that's now half foreign....
The UK used to do very well.
There used to be a critical mass of phone, chip and modem design, centred around Reading. That is now pretty dead.
Between Broadcom in Bracknell and Renesas in Farnborough, another 250 have lost their jobs in this area over the past year, Qualcomm in Farnborough are pretty much the last option left for those with a modem design background.
There were a lot of phones designed around here, back in 2002, I counted 15 companies that were designing phones within an hour commute of Reading. I now know of only 2, Vertu and Huawei. As a former hardware engineer, with a hand in the design of the Nokia N70, N80 and Motorola V1100, that’s a bit heartbreaking.
Those jobs are not being replaced, an industrial cluster has been left to rot and die.
"In February 2009, Ericsson entered into a joint venture with ST-Microelectronics – itself a merger of SGS-Thomson and NXP – in a bid to take on Qualcomm."
Sorry, but STM has never merged with NXP. They together created a joint venture (STM and NXP wireless) in 2008, yes, but that's all.
STM was, historically, back in 87, a merger between the italian SGS (Società Generale Semiconduttori) and the french Thomson Semiconducteurs, which gave birth to SGS-Thomson, and then STMicroelectronics.
From an ex-STM
In February 2009, Ericsson entered into a joint venture with ST-Microelectronics – itself a merger of SGS-Thomson and NXP – in a bid to take on Qualcomm
STMicroelectronics is not spelled with a hypen, and the Company is very vocal about that.
STMicroelectronics is most definitely NOT a merger of SGS Thomson ( no hypen) and NXP, these are two different companies and still are today.
Other errors in this article, but not enough time to detail.
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