Transmeta Corporation on Monday announced that it is giving
up on its engineering services to focus on developing and licensing
intellectual property. The news follows the company’s initial phase of its
re-alignment earlier this week by decreasing its worldwide workforce by
approximately 39 percent, or 75 employees, most of whom worked in the engineering
services business.
“Transmeta has a long history of pioneering innovative
technologies that have resulted in a very strong intellectual property
portfolio,” said Lester Crudele, president and CEO. “After a critical
evaluation of all our lines of businesses, we have decided that IP development
and licensing will be our core business activity going forward. We continue to
believe that this is the best way for us to deliver our technology to the
market and monetize our investments. Therefore, we have initiated a
restructuring plan to re-align our headcount and expenses accordingly.”
The troubled chip designer also took the initial steps to
close its sales and support offices in Taiwan and Japan. Over the next two
quarters, as the company completes its existing engineering services work, the
company expects to further reduce its headcount by about 25 to 55 people,
depending on the level of support required for the Microsoft FlexGo program,
the company said.
Shares of the Santa Clara company fell near a 52-week low at
about 13 percent to 90 cents upon release of the news, but has since slightly recovered
to 95 cents.
“We believe that by focusing our time and resources on our
IP licensing, we can better serve the IDM (integrated device manufacturer)
customer base and continue to develop additional IP to make our technologies
accessible to a much larger customer base,” Crudele added.