No real surprise, as NXP have been rather frozen in time, as others released cheaper and more capable 8051 alternatives.

The politics of a Freescale merger I am sure have not helped either.

NXP did even sample some Wide Vcc P89LPC parts, I think designed in Hong Kong, but they swung marketing to Cortex and did not promote them.

An irony here, is that Microchip still sell 89C51 parts, at sensible prices!

Even in their Cortex offerings, NXP are looking dated.
Again, they have been caught napping with 3v3 parts, whilst others release Wide Vcc capability in M0, and even M4 devices.

A significant number of Asian vendors back the 8051, with growing line-ups, even those that also offer Cortex, so clearly they do not think Cortex is the only solution.

The 8051 will outlive NXP's 8 bit business.

Detail : 'All' is not quite what their website says.

They have certainly aggressively pruned offerings, but it seems not eliminated all of them ?
eg P89LPC925FDH & P89LPC936FDH shows as still available on Reels (no longer in tubes)
I see the prices of those (few) remaining parts are very much legacy-design prices.


Meanwhile, from my other post, I believe there are more 8051 released/announced in the last 12 months than AVR's & PIC18's

* SiLabs have the expanding EFM8 series
* Nuvoton have data up on 1T cores and a solid series of 4T devices
* Holtek have recently added a range of 8051
* SyncMOS expand their families
* ABOV have a burst of new part 8051 numbers
* Myson now mention 1.8~5.5V parts.
* STC continue to expand their 8051 families