Texas Instrument

    Tycoons of the future

Introduction

As I’m writing this report on the computer, millions of commands working on the background help me search for information, support the software, and connect me to the most broadly network in the world, the Internet. Computers can assist us in doing a bunch of things efficiently and smoothly we could never imagine. All of those assistances are backed by a chip lies beneath the keyboard called Central Processing Unit (CPU). CPU is an artificial semiconductor that can deal with means of commands at the same time we are using computers. With the increasing development of the technology industry, from personal computers at our homes to manufacture machines inside of factories, we are using more and more electronic devices more often than ever before. All of those are supported by the CPU, and other parts made by semiconductor suppliers.

Semiconductors have been playing an important role in technology development, and the most common company known for producing these parts for our daily use devices is Intel Corporation. In 1991, Intel became the biggest chip maker by revenue and has held the position ever since.1

The most well-known product from the company is Intel processors for personal computers. Intel has been the largest CPU supplier for computer companies such as Dell, Apple, Samsung, and Lenovo. However, Intel has also faced numerous antitrust violation accuses in the past few years due to the large volume of product supplied to different computer companies. In 2010, Federal Trade Commission started an investigation on whether Intel has violated the antitrust law, but the penalties are provided by different computer companies it worked with. Intel itself doesn’t hurt much from the accuse. As a result, sales of revenue of Intel have slid a bit because of the adoption of other semiconductor parts suppliers by its partners.

While Intel targets its market on daily portable device users, another US-based semiconductor chips maker, TI Corp, reaches a much wider market in semiconductors. TI’s analog chips and embedded processors account for 85% of the company’s total revenue, which renders it one of the top ten semiconductor maker in the world.2 TI’s successes in the microprocessor business smartly avoided Intel’s CPU’s market and hence becomes one of the largest calculator in US. TI generated approximately 13,000 million dollars of revenues in 2015. Compare to Intel’s 55,355 million, this is still a small portion of the whole business, but TI wisely avoided direct competition with other CPU makers such as Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.

There has rarely been an increase in sales of personal computers, as well as the CPU in them. Actually, “PC sales drop to historic lows since 2007, the year when the first iPhone was introduced”3, and analysts predict the trend is still going on in the next two to three years. But TI is different. Instead of limiting the product only in one area, for instance Intel in CPU, TI’s expansive product line gives it a brighter future. Below is a description of TI’s Income Statement summary in 2015 and 2014.