Mannerisms

But, at Electronica '08, it was just apps, apps, apps. And they all go on about the same apps: green stuff - saving energy type markets; health stuff - diagnostic equipment in your home; auto stuff- putting more electronics in cars.

The reason why the talk is just apps was explained to me by a big company guy. "Big companies don't do R&D any more. The R&D budget is spent on product development."

So CEOs can't go on, these days, about the next big thing bubbling away in their labs. They haven't got anything bubbling away in their labs.

So they talk apps. And is the Green stuff really going to make them money? After all, as soon as the oil price drops, Green VC investment slows, as it's slowing now, and people think twice about dumping the SUV.

And will 'distributed healthcare' i.e. diagnostic equipment in the home, really happen in a big enough way to significantly impact the fortunes of the semiconductor industry?

The medical profession is not too keen. Already doctors are pissed off by patients going in and saying they've got such-and-such disease because they've read about the disease's symptoms in the medical columns in the newspapers.

The prospect of  having patients going in and saying: 'My home diagnostic machine says I've got beri-beri, scurvy, piles or whatever' is going to appall doctors.

Finally auto. The electrification of the auto is going to be a slow process when batteries give so few miles and it takes eight hours or so to re-charge them.

Adding more and more electronic functions to cars may be a trend in the top-of-the-range models, but so many companies are chasing these apps it likely they'll also chase profitability to death.

When you replace breakthroughs in technology with new apps as the way to drive a  semiconductor company forward, you tread a rocky road.

Maybe it's worth re-opening that dusty old room with 'Central R&D Lab' on the door.

After all, its costs are deductible.