The shares in Texas Instruments have hit a down draft over the last several days. The shares hit $30.19 in November 7 intraday trading. Three days later, they hit $28.38.TI did announce that it was coming out with a new chip that targets cheap phones, the Ecosto chip. It will be made for phones that sell around $100, which should make it popular in the fast-growing Chinese market.TI customers like Nokia are pushing less expensive phones in China (at least less expensive than most phones sold in the US) in an attempt to get more of the cell phone replacement market there which is subscribers who are moving on to a newer phone.But, cheap phones need cheap chips, and Wall St. may not be in love with the idea that TI will be selling lower priced chips to keep driving its revenue.According to the Wall Street Journal, Nokia is targeting the Chinese market as well. Ironically, the big Finnish company claims that it is going after more expensive phone buyers. Replacement phones are about 55% of the total market now. And, Nokia is quick to point out that most replacements are actually upgrades.Less expensive chips targeted to $100 phones. Is the TI plan out of step with Nokia? Or, does TI know something about China that Nokia does not?Either way, Texas Instrument’s shares did not have a good week.Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.
TI Goes Down Market (TXN)(NOK)
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
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