Semiconductor companies and Airline companies.

Warren Buffet had said that the Airline industry is a strict no for him.I guess he might have said the same thing about the semiconductor/Electronics industry.Since joining the industry more than 7 years ago,I have seen the industry in bad shape.Even during the boom for 2005-06 ,companies were in bad shape.The argument then was that the problem is in over capacity/supply and that the situation will pass once demand goes up.But,it was not to be as the sub prime crisis and recession started after that.Earlier it was supply side problem and now it is a demand side problem.Though one must concede that a lot of consolidation(M&A) happened to to solve the supply side problem.But,unfortunately most of these M&A's were failures.I will just give a few example to illustrate it..
i)Motorola acquired Symbol.But,most of the senior management/talent had to leave the company.Considering that the key takeaway for a successful acquisition is human resources,it seems to me to be an utter failure.

ii)Motorola spinoff Freescale has been a sad story all the way.It is in the selling block now.

iii)Infineon is sustaining mostly through it lucrative memory business.

iv)Siemens mobile could not be saved after the acquisition by Benque.It was an utter failure

ii)Techtronics acquired Hughes and finally selling it.The very idea of creating synergy out of the vertical integration backfired.

iii) NXP is spinning off new companies ever other day.One of my friends joined Connexant.Then he got transferred to NXP as a part of an acquisition.Now he is in ST-NXP due to another M&A.All this within a 2 years time.