Recently, the Dutch trade union FNV announced that the Dutch employees of chip manufacturer NXP will go on strike today (March 12).

The reason for the strike is that workers at NXP's Nijmegen plant in eastern Netherlands are unhappy with the company's offer of only a 2.5% pay rise, and instead demand a 9% pay rise and bonuses. If their demands are not met, other plants may also take similar action.

If you can't get it, you destroy it. As the former semiconductor division of Philips, NXP is too "stingy" to maintain its "dignity"!

Philips' "abandoned child" is willing to spend money

After becoming Philips' "abandoned child", NXP has spent a lot of money to establish itself.

The biggest turning point was in 2015, when NXP acquired Freescale Semiconductor, founded by Motorola, for nearly $11.8 billion. The combined company will be worth approximately $40 billion, making it one of the top ten non-storage semiconductor companies in the world and the largest automotive semiconductor supplier.

Subsequently, NXP acquired the WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity business assets of Marvell, a leading global semiconductor manufacturer, for $1.76 billion.

In China, after "inheriting" the office established by Philips Semiconductor in China, NXP jointly established Datang NXP Semiconductors with Datang Telecom, holding a 49% stake; it sold its standard products division to Beijing Jianguang Capital and private equity fund Wise Road Capital for $2.75 billion, which later became Anshi Semiconductor under Wintech Technology.

Powerful NXP certainly does not lack "admirers," including Qualcomm, which offered $38 billion to acquire it, but ultimately failed. It also received a $2 billion contract termination fee from Qualcomm.

Although Qualcomm failed, Huifeng Technology spent $165 million to purchase NXP's voice and audio application solutions business.

According to NXP's financial report, revenue for Q4 2023 was $3.42 billion, a year-on-year increase of 3%. Revenue from automotive, industrial, and IoT businesses remained flat year-on-year. For the full year, its revenue was $13.28 billion, compared to $13.205 billion in the previous year, representing a year-on-year increase of 1%. Net profit for the full year was $2.797 billion, compared to $2.787 billion in the previous year.

In the challenging semiconductor market, while NXP may be "mediocre," a "soft landing" is always a safe bet.

Given the significant upfront investments and mediocre performance, NXP may be struggling to meet employee demands for bonuses.

Standing at the cusp of the trend

In the fifth wave of AI-driven information technology, NXP has long realized that semiconductors are at the core of 5G, industrial internet, IoT, cloud computing, and more, and has quietly laid the groundwork.

NXP has not only developed an IoT security solution based on the A71CL security chip (SE) in collaboration with Alibaba Cloud, supporting Alibaba Cloud Link ID2 trusted device identity authentication services, but has also collaborated extensively with Baidu Cloud on IoT applications and jointly released the hardware product BIE-AI-Board.

In addition, NXP has chosen Amazon Web Services, the global leader in cloud computing, as its cloud service provider, migrating the majority of its electronic design automation (EDA) workloads from local data centers to the Amazon Web Services platform to meet customized semiconductor requirements for automotive electronics, industrial internet of things (IoT), mobile devices, and communication infrastructure businesses.

As the value of edge computing gradually emerges, NXP has launched the EdgeVerse platform, which brings together a comprehensive global portfolio of edge computing products. The EdgeScale solution has been jointly piloted with China Mobile, and edge computing pilot cooperation has been conducted with partners such as Alibaba, embedding cloud into EdgeScale.

"Sinicization" is another label for NXP.

Final Thoughts

Standing at the cusp of the trend, even pigs can fly.

With the help of AI, how will NXP, with its destiny tied to "Pu," shake off mediocre performance and plan for the future?

For now, NXP should focus more on how to meet employees' demands for a 9% pay rise and bonuses, as AI cannot yet replace their jobs.