AMD's former sales chief joins Freescale

Henri Richard will join Freescale Semiconductor as its new chief sales and marketing officer, just weeks after stepping down from the same position at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

Freescale hired Richard for his "expertise in developing customer solutions" across a range of industry segments including OEM, indirect and end-user channels, and both hardware and software products, Freescale CEO Michel Mayer said in a statement.

The company also values Richard's experience throughout the U.S., European and Asian markets, gained from positions he has held at WebGain, IBM and Seagate Technology, Mayer said.

On Sept. 11, Richard will take on the title of senior vice president, chief sales and marketing officer. David Perkins, who is Freescale's senior vice president of global sales and marketing, will leave the company later this month after a transition period, to pursue other opportunities, said Freescale spokesman Rob Hatley.

Richard joins the company at a time of change, since Freescale was acquired in December 2006 by a consortium of private equity funds led by The Blackstone Group, and ceased to trade as a public company on the New York Stock Exchange. The company has also taken on new leadership recently, as IBM veteran Lisa Su joined Freescale in June as the new senior vice president and chief technology officer (CTO).

During his five years at AMD, Richard led the company's marketing efforts to win share from its giant rival Intel. AMD initially saw strong success in that quest thanks to sales of its Opteron server processor, but the company entered a price war with Intel and has posted a series of financial losses for the past several quarters.

He will face different challenges at Freescale, which makes embedded semiconductors for the automotive, consumer, industrial, networking and wireless markets. AMD also makes chips for embedded applications, but relies far more on revenue from PC processors and chipsets.

The two companies are about the same size, however, with Freescale reporting 2006 revenue of US$6.4 billion, slightly higher than AMD's revenue of US$5.6 billion for the same year, including the impact of ATI. However, Freescale stumbled in the most recent quarter, reporting on July 19 that net sales for the second quarter of 2007 were US$1.38 billion, compared to US$1.60 billion in the second quarter of 2006.

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