Summary
Micron CMOS imagers division is on sale for sure. However, does Micron really need to invest efforts in spinning off the division including branding it under Aptina, splitting sales forces and issuing separate financial reports?Not sure. At these tough times for Micron, continuing to bleed from its DRAM wounds - it may be more efficient to offer it as it is for potential buyers like OmniVision for example.
Analysis
Decorating the bride before the wedding is a clever move when you have the time and money to invest to make her looks more glorious. However, Aptina is not FreeScale. A relatively small division that contributes 11% to Micron revenues cannot be compared to Motorola when it branded its semiconductor division under FreeScale.
Micron has more urgent issues to handle on its journey to survive and maybe come back as a dominant player in the DRAM/Flash market.
The decision to sell, although not stated specifically, is a right decision since Aptina does not contribute a positive part to the synergy Micron saw when it entered the CMOS image sensor several years ago using its 6T SRAM cells as the building block for this new initiative.
However, days are different and the need to concentrate on its main core, memory devices, seems to be superior on investing time and money to spin off the sensors division. Motorola has the time and money when it split FreeScale which recently sold for about $17Bn. Not sure if Aptina can reach tenth of this bill, and more than that, not sure if Micron board of directors has the patience ( 6 years in FreeScale case) to wait to see what this move will bring to the shareholders.
A more practical approach ( since results are already separated) would be to apply for bids from the well known players in this market, and to exit this segment
