December 2008 Archives

So, Frans van Houten is to step down as CEO of NXP. For NXP this could be a good thing. I like Frans van Houten, but he's not a semiconductor guy.

Looking at this I realise 2008 was not exactly a stunning year for the industry. But at least the chip business held up when other businesses, like finance and car-making, fell down. Let's hope 2009 produces better things. The ten best things about 2008 were:

Transitron have added 19 devices to their series IV 54/74 compatible range of TTL silicon integrated circuits', starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of August 6^th 1969.

Is protectionism about to rear its ugly head once again? One hopes this beggar-my-neighbour policy won't be adopted by governments, but it's worth recalling the world's wittiest protectionist measure.

The solar power industry will go as potty as the memory industry next year with massive over-supply causing dramatic falls in pricing. While sales of solar panels will increase nearly 10 per, revenues from sales of solar panels will fall by 20 per cent.

Exports of  British transistors and phototransistors in February reached a new high level of over £76,000, a 27 per cent increase of on January's record total of £59,733' starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of April 26^th 1961.

Entrepreneurs are rightly valued as people who take great risks and inspire others to follow in their footsteps but, as the legendary former CEO of Toshiba Semiconductor, Tsuyoshi Kawanishi points out in his book Chip Management, many others are also responsible for a company's success.

If you get one of these I don't think you'll complain. If you're still looking for presents- here are some ideas. If you're looking to treat yourself in the New Year Sales - go for it.

'A process in information technology, developed by the semiconductor division of Sprague Electric, is being employed for the first time in the time capsule which has been left on the moon', starts a story in Electronics Weekly's issue of August 6^th 1969 (17 days after Apollo 11's moon-landing).

Many decades ago the semiconductor industry had one thing at the top of its wish-list: a silicon transistor.

Proof, if further proof were needed, that the USA is turning towards socialism, comes with the news that an alliance of companies is looking for $2 billion of government funds to get into batteries for electric cars.

After a year in which the Dow Jones dipped from 12,500 to below 9,000, when the oil price went from $147 to $40, and the £ went from 2 to the $ to 1.5, it takes a brave soul to forecast the semiconductor market in 2009. Let alone forecast it to a decimal point.

Last week I was pointing out that the Financial Times reckons semiconductor shares are cheap and next year could be a good opportunity for each of us to make our next significant fortune by buying at the bottom of the market.

Thanks to a member of London Welsh RFC for this one:

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?Welsh_rugby_team_could_kill_the_Pope&in_article_id=450417&in_page_id=2

Makes you wonder: What should Welsh Catholics be praying for?

When it's not trying to take over the world, it seems Qualcomm is still doing what it does best - making great wireless ICs.

Andy Grove, Intel's legendary Co-founder, ex-CEO and Chairman, has hit the headlines this week with his espousal of non-linear strategic dynamics and his championing of the idea that Intel should go into battery manufacturing for electric cars.

Once upon a time the big companies decided that they would out-source more of their production, cut out basic R&D and follow very closely what their customers in the major markets wanted them to do.

Why is wireless data so difficult to get? OK you can buy an iPhone and pay £35 a month and you have a great wireless data tool which can use 3G or WiFi.

This is based on companies' longevity in the top ten rankings. You might dispute RCA's place but it was one of only four companies (the other three being TI, Motorola and GE) which made the transition from being a top ten discrete transistor supplier to becoming a top ten IC supplier. RCA was a top tenner for over 20 years and was also, of course, the great pioneer of CMOS.

Under the headline: 'A few hints to businessmen who have trouble with their face powder' TI runs the following ad in the August 6^th 1969 edition of Electronics Weekly.

Is Qualcomm naïve? Or disingenuous? Or evasive? Asked: "What do people misunderstand about Qualcomm?" at a San Diego conference, Qualcomm COO Len Lauer is reported to have replied: "From a PR point of view, I think the way we are most misunderstood is from the newspaper headlines and everyone attacking our licensing model. What they miss underneath that is all of the innovation and research and development we do... opening mobile radios to new apps and services."

Debts imposed by private equity funds on companies like Freescale and NXP could cause the next big financial crisis, with $500 billion of such debt needing to be rescheduled by 2010, according to the Bank of International Settlements.

Hynix could be showing the way for industry in the expected downturn. It is planning to sack a third of its executives.

In 1982, US IC manufacturers supplied 51 per cent of the world's chips and Japanese manufacturers supplied 35 per cent. In 1989, Japanese companies supplied 51 per cent of the market, and US manufacturers supplied 35 per cent. Out of the top ten largest microchip companies in the world, six were Japanese.

Another day, another proposed bail-out. Interesting to hear the European arm of SEMI, the US-based trade body for the semiconductor materials and manufacturing equipment industry, calling on the EU to put money to supporting the European chip industry.

Last week in Euroland, it was interesting to see that, although the big companies seem to be calling the shots on Euro-R&D, the kind of R&D the electronics industry will increasingly be doing is well suited to small companies - i.e. software.

Well relief all round. Ever since February the bit of the company I work for has been up for sale. The worst thing about it was the spectre of uncertainty. As the sale process continued it looked as if the worst turn-out was the most likely - that we'd be bought by a private equity firm.

"If the global recession ends before 2010, bombed out semi stocks are a great bargain", wrote the Financial Times yesterday. 

Why do they do it? Well about twice a decade the DRAM market comes good. Demand outstrips supply, prices are up, the money comes rolling in, you're on a high like a heroin fix or a win on the horses. You never forget it.

'General Instrument are now on line with a proven new MOS facility at Glenrothes with a new family of MOS devices shortly to roll off the stocks', starts a story in Electronics Weekly's issue of August 20^th 1969.

Is Intel trying to stall the EC's anti-trust investigation? You bet. Back in the summer we learnt that the EC had reviewed the evidence in the case and decided, like the Japanese and Korean governments, that Intel had acted in an anticompetitive way.

Qualcomm has lost yet another legal case, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upholding a decision by a federal judge in San Diego that Qualcomm failed in its legal duty to disclose its patents to the Joint Video Team (JVT) standards body.

One of the pet hates of GPs is patients who come in and say: "I read  that bit called 'A Dr writes . . .' in the Daily Mail/Sun/Mirror/Express and  it says I've got a terminal case of bubonic plague."

Sitting at the last presentation before lunch with my attention drifting, my fingers involuntarily type 'wine shop paris' into Google and up comes a list. Suddenly I am all-attention. There is a shop which sells only Bordeaux. and, by the look of it, every Bordeaux.

If Dr Wolfgang Ziebart was the kind of guy to indulge in schadenfreude, which I don't for one moment think he is, he would be feeling that he's well out of Infineon whose shares dropped to 1 euro yesterday.

It turns out that the most semiconductor-savvy guys in the past two years were the managements of Motorola and Philips who negotiated the huge valuations of $17.6 billion and $11.6 billion respectively for Freescale Semiconductor and NXP Semiconductors and sold them to private equity consortiums led by Blackstone and KKR at the top of the semiconductor cycle.   

Programmable logic used to be implemented by a bipolar fuse technology which involved blowing connections on a logic array to customize it.

Venture Capitalism has its fashions and, at the moment, it's the low season. That was the message from Mike Gera, General Partner of Pond Ventures, at the recent Silicon South-West 'Perfect Timing' conference.

It is a long-held semiconductor industry tenet that mergers and takeovers don't work. Here are the ten worst performing mergers in the industry's history.

'Apollo 11 did not end with the successful splashdown of the three astronauts last Thursday', ran an Electronics Weekly story in its issue of July 30^th 1969, 'equipment for scientific experiments was left on the moon and the samples of rock and dust which were brought back will give scientists unique material for analysis.'

When your product's commoditised is the answer. What's in a margin? Well a lot these days. Beset by stock market analysts, private equity owners and pro-active shareholders, CEOs are expected to target very precise margins and, even more inconveniently, to actually achieve them.

Current attempts to use multi-cores in the mainstream computing world, like the efforts made by Intel and Microsoft and some US universities, are doomed, according to the Professor of Computer Science at Bristol University, Professor David May FRS.

Instead of narrowing the market applicability of its products by focussing on specific customer needs, the programmable logic industry would do better to address its fundamental problems : FPGAs use too much power and are too expensive.