Silicon Laboratories: More New Products Needed

When Silicon Laboratories (SLAB) announced it was selling its handset chip business, we said it left the company with few options. The main one is to make a whole lot more of the chips that don’t go into cell phones. In keeping with that strategy, the company announced a new product:

Silicon Laboratories Inc., a leader in high-performance, analog-intensive, mixed-signal ICs, today announced at International IC-China Conference and Exhibition/Embedded Systems Conference-China 2007 the most highly integrated 8-bit MCU combining a 25 MIPS CPU, 10-bit 500 ksps ADC and an internal /-2 % oscillator in a 3×3 mm package. The C8051T60x product family adds to Silicon Laboratories’ portfolio of over 60 high-performance Small Form Factor MCUs. The C8051T60x is ideal for consumer and industrial applications including toys, camera modules, cell phone accessories, portable devices, home appliances and motor controllers.”The C8051T60x is the first mixed-signal 8-bit MCU with unprecedented functionality designed for cost- and space-sensitive applications,” said Derrell Coker, vice president of Silicon Laboratories. “With the highest performance and integration in a small form factor, the C8051T60x enables manufacturers to easily and cost-effectively design high-performance products.”

They’ll have to design a bunch of them for the product to move the needle. Pricing begins at $0.45 in quantities of 10K. Given the company’s non-wireless revenue run rate of $300 million, that indicates it would take about six million of these chips per year to boost revenue by 1%.

SLAB 1-yr chart: