Under the important strategic and commercial value of chip products, new and old players will sing and I will appear on the stage, trying to get a share of the various industrial chain links. The current leading players in the global semiconductor field are basically established in the mid to late 20th century. For example, Intel, the world‘s largest semiconductor company, was founded in 1968.

However, in the "elite club" in the global semiconductor field, there is a player whose history can be traced back to 1930 and has spanned about 91 years.

In fact, the player’s own history is inseparable from the history of the integrated circuit industry-the world’s first integrated circuit was born in the hands of an engineer of this company.

This company is Texas Instruments. Data show that in 2020, Texas Instruments ranked seventh among global semiconductor companies and has been selected as a "Fortune 500" company for many years. Stock information shows that from 2016 to 2021, the market value of Texas Instruments nearly tripled.

Interestingly, Texas Instruments was not initially positioned as an independent chip company, but as a subsidiary of a geological exploration company. In 90 years, from a subsidiary that produces transistors for geological exploration to the world‘s largest manufacturer of digital signals and analog circuits, what has Texas Instruments experienced? What‘s the secret?

1. The growth path of semiconductor giants starting from the defense business

Open the top 10 list of the global semiconductor industry, since 1993, Texas Instruments has been listed among them. Explore the reasons why Texas Instruments has been ups and downs in the semiconductor market over the past 30 years. It has an extremely important strategic position in the global semiconductor industry chain.

According to incomplete statistics, Texas Instruments has approximately 45,000 analog products and customer design tools. Almost all electronic devices on the market contain Texas Instruments products. Therefore, in the stock market, Texas Instruments is often regarded as a "barometer" for the entire semiconductor and electronics industry.

In fact, Rome was not built in a day. At the beginning of the establishment of Texas Instruments, the company‘s business was very single, only producing one type of transistor product required by the parent company Geophysical Service Incorporated (GSI) for geological exploration.

In 1930, Eugene McDermott, Cecil H. Green, J. Erik Jonsson, Patrick E. Hagerty (Patrick E. Haggerty) and others founded Texas Instruments.

Then in 1941, McDermott, Green, and Johnson bought the company. In November 1945, Patrick E. Hagerty was hired as the general manager of the Experiment and Manufacturing (L&M) department.

Texas Instruments entered the U.S. military market with submarine inspection equipment in 1942, and has made achievements in the fields of infrared radar, laser guidance, and military computers.

In 1951, the company‘s L&M division quickly surpassed GSI‘s geographic division by virtue of its defense contract. The company was renamed "General Instrument" and in the same year, the company was named "Texas Instruments." In 1997, Texas Instruments sold its defense business to Raytheon for $2.95 billion, and began to focus on analog circuits and embedded systems in the semiconductor field.

In the semiconductor field, Texas Instruments has left a long list of amazing deeds: in 1954 it produced the world’s first commercial silicon transistor, in the same year it designed and manufactured the first transistor radio, and in 1958 it invented integrated circuits and Hand-held calculator, launched the first single-chip microcontroller in 1970, invented the DLP (digital light processing) chip in 1987...

It is worth mentioning that Jack Kilby, an engineer who joined Texas Instruments in 1958, is the inventor of integrated circuits.

At that time, Jack failed to "save enough" for the company‘s two-week traditional vacation because of his new job. While the others were on vacation, Jack began to study new processes that he was interested in, and eventually developed the world‘s first integrated circuit on September 12, 1958. Because of his outstanding contribution to the invention of integrated circuits, Jack Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000.

2. Two twists and turns, missing the microprocessor and mobile chip outlets

However, despite the strong technical strength of Texas Instruments, the company‘s development has not been smooth sailing. It has missed success in the fields of microprocessors and mobile chips.

Texas Instruments had an opportunity to replace Intel in the CPU field, but ultimately fell short.

In 1970, when the computer manufacturer Computer Terminal Corp. (CTC) designed the Datapoint 2200 (the earliest end-user computer), it was hoped that Intel could adopt a single chip to make the Datapoint 2200 smaller and have better heat dissipation.

Then the Intel 4004 chip came into being and became the world‘s first microprocessor. But because Intel didn‘t care about the 4004 chip at the beginning, the 4004 project was delayed for 6 months during the development process.

CTC had to find Texas Instruments and made the same request. A few months later, Texas Instruments‘ TMX 1795 was born, which was called "LSI (Large Scale Integration) Milestone" by Businessweek in March 1971.

But the TMX 1795 chip has many problems. For example, it cannot withstand voltage fluctuations of more than 50mV, nor can it perform calculations independently; its structure is unreasonable and poor, which leads to its large size and high production costs.

At this time, CTC has completed the upgrade of Datapoint 2200, and the operating speed and heat dissipation problems have been well resolved. The TMX 1795 project was thus terminated, and it was not put on the market like Intel 4004 and 8008.

In addition to the PC era, Texas Instruments has also stood on the top of the world in the mobile era. Before the appearance of the Apple iPhone, Texas Instruments, as a chip supplier to Nokia and other manufacturers, dominated the mobile chip field for a while.

However, after the emergence of smart phones, the importance of mobile phone basebands has continued to increase, and Texas Instruments lacks patents in the field of communication basebands. If mobile phone manufacturers use their chips, they also need to match other companies‘ baseband chips, which is costly.

This causes Texas Instruments to often be at a disadvantage when competing with Qualcomm, which holds a large number of communications patents. Therefore, Texas Instruments laid off 1,700 people in the wireless department in 2012 and gradually abandoned the mobile chip market.

3. Multi-industry coverage helps Texas Instruments successfully transform

Even though the two failures made Texas Instruments‘ status in the PC and smart phone era decline, Texas Instruments has not been devastated because of this.

In fact, every time Texas Instruments transforms, it can quickly regroup and succeed in a new field.

Texas Instruments began to abandon the defense industry and microprocessors in 1997, and purchased National Semiconductor for $6.5 billion to lay out analog circuits and embedded systems.

In 2020, Texas Instruments‘ analog circuit revenue is US$10.9 billion, accounting for 75.38% of total revenue; Embedded system revenue is US$2.6 billion, accounting for 17.98% of total revenue in 2020. The two businesses accounted for 93.36% of the total, and are currently the main source of revenue for Texas Instruments.

After Texas Instruments sold its LCD, DSL, sensors and controllers, and mobile phone baseband business to Intel, Infineon, and Bain Capital in 2007, it expanded the business market to the automotive and industrial fields.

In 2020, the industrial market and the automotive market accounted for 57% of Texas Instruments‘ revenue, and this market has also become a major market for Texas Instruments.

The reason why Texas Instruments can quickly regain success after the transformation is due to multiple product layouts, focus on technological development, and talent training.

Most of Texas Instruments‘ transformation success comes from strong products in its original business. Texas Instruments adopts the strategy of "casting the net widely and catching more fish" to promote the layout in multiple fields at the same time, relying on the complete industry line coverage to gain an advantage in the competition.

For example, when Texas Instruments produces radar and other military equipment for the US military, it has also made achievements in the fields of automatic process control computers.

As early as the 1980s, it built an 8-bit ADC for Ford and General Motors, a vehicle-mounted device called TLC542.

In 2003, Texas Instruments also introduced the first automotive infotainment system.

After selling its mobile business, Texas Instruments‘ automotive business revenue reached $1 billion in 2010, making it one of the few automotive processor manufacturers at the time.

According to Lv Yuzhao, a former Texas Instruments executive in China, Texas Instruments has more than 100,000 products, covering all products from processors, microcontrollers, wireless, to ADC/DAC, and can provide customers with a full range of needs.

The reason why Texas Instruments has such a comprehensive product line is because it attaches great importance to R&D and innovation.

After Jack Kilby became famous, Texas Instruments established the famous Kilby Laboratory to develop new technologies in the next five to ten years or even longer. Texas Instruments’ gallium nitride process, capacitive isolation process and other technologies are all derived from In this laboratory.

Texas Instruments has always attached great importance to R&D and sales capacity building, and its research and development expenses (R&D) as a percentage of revenue has been stable at around 10% for a long time.

In 2020, Texas Instruments invested 1.53 billion U.S. dollars in R&D and is one of the top ten semiconductor companies in the United States for R&D investment. So far, it has 61,316 patents.

In addition, Texas Instruments also attaches great importance to personnel training. Zhang Zhongmou of TSMC, Rujing Zhang of SMIC, and Shilong Zhang, founder of Shengbang shares, are all from Texas Instruments.

According to the descriptions of people who have interned in Texas Instruments, the internship stage will have full teaching of old employees, accurate internship plans to the day, and 1-to-1 training for department managers. Interns also need to give feedback on internships every week or every day to facilitate observation and evaluation by HR or department managers.

Under such a more scientific talent training process, Texas Instruments has become the first choice for many outstanding talents in internship and employment, ensuring the supplement of their own fresh blood.