Tom Starnes

Tom Starnes is arguably the best-known embedded processor analyst in the semiconductor industry. Covering a range of products, Starnes’ insight, coupled with his no-nonsense approach to processor and end-use analysis has led to his becoming one of the most sought-after consultants in the world of processors. It is through his hard-hitting insights that many key players in this industry have found their focus and refined their product strategies.

Mr. Starnes has spent more than 15 years analyzing the architectures, vendors, strategies, and markets of programmable microprocessors (MPU), microcontrollers (MCU), digital signal processors (DSP), and processor cores (intellectual property – IP) that play a quiet but vital role in anything electronic in our lives. He specializes in embedded systems, which means he is more interested in applications like cell phones, networking, automobiles, consumer electronics, office equipment, and industrial automation than in general PCs and servers. Mr. Starnes also provides key insight to the general trends of the semiconductor industry. He has extensive background in marketing strategies, product planning, product introduction, design-in processes, and customer interaction. He frequently advises organizations behind the Embedded Systems Conference, ARM® TechCon and similar industry forums, and he actively participates in the events.

Mr. Starnes comes to Objective Analysis after building a solid reputation as an analyst over ten years at Gartner Dataquest, preceded by a long tenure in Motorola’s semiconductor operations (now, Freescale Semiconductors) in strategic, technical, and tactical marketing and management positions.

Starnes’ deep understanding of this business can be traced to his training as an engineer and experience as a marketing manager in Motorola’s microprocessor group. In his 15+ years at Motorola Starnes was instrumental in establishing the 68000 processor architecture as a compute engine for workstations and transitioning it to the dominant processor in the broader markets of embedded applications. Two years in Europe gave him solid exposure to international issues and two years marketing DSPs exposed him to these unique processors.

Academically, Mr. Starnes has a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas. More of Mr. Starnes’ background can be found on his Strategy Sanity website.

Mr. Starnes can be reached at Tom.Starnes (at) Objective-Analysis.com, or by telephone at +1 (512) 345-4074.