Transmeta Shifts To Licensing Model

There is really no question about it. More often that not, licensing can be more effective than trying to all out sell something. But is this really the best way for Transmeta Corp. to go? I am just not completely convinced, to be perfectly honest.

Struggling Transmeta Corp. said Thursday that it would shift its focus toward licensing its intellectual property and continue to manufacture its Efficeon chips only for “critical” customers.

As part of its new model, Transmeta struck an engineering deal with Sony to apply Transmeta’s LongRun2 low-power technology to the Cell processor and other Sony engineering efforts. Transmeta also replaced its chief executive, Matthew Perry, with former senior vice president of marketing Art Swift.

As part of the shift, Transmeta said it had laid off 67 employees. The goal is to shift the company’s focus away from the costly business of manufacturing chips, into a model focused on intellectual property, one used by embedded microprocessor ARM Ltd., among others. [Read the rest]