July 2010 Archives

Back in June 1997, Apple was predicting a three trillion dollar market for a handheld computer called Newton.

Like watching a champion golfer miss a two foot putt, you get a frisson of schadenfreude when seeing a top-notch tech company screw up.

There was once a famous electronics business which went bust twice - once in 1903 and once in 1993. Its first products were alternators and electricity meters.

It's amazing, on the face of it, that even though Nokia out-sells Apple 15 to 1 on the number of phones they each ship, Apple makes 10X more  profit than Nokia. In Q2 Nokia's profit was $291 million; Apple's was $3.25 billion.

The biggest tease of the year is the Microsoft-ARM architectural and instruction set licensing deal.

The investigation into the relationship between  Intel and Dell by the US Securities  and Exchange Commission (SEC) has started to peel back the veneer of respectability on the squalid state of the worldwide personal computer industry.

Papers presented at the symposium on data Transmission at Delft emphasised the universal interest in transmission of data by landline links.

So, 50 years ago this year, starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of September 28^th 1960.

'With austerity being the order of the day, now is the chance to reduce costs', Ed writes in his diary, 'everyone seems to expect tough times. Cutting is part of the zeitgeist. If I can get some cost-cutting measures in place now it will increase our value at the IPO.'

"We have enough capacity to supply all the orders we're getting and our lead-times are four weeks across the board", said the CEO of QRMicroelectronics, Benzo Carlotti, at the company's Q2 results meeting.

With the rumours swirling around that Apple may buy ARM, it is worth remembering that Apple once controlled ARM.

There are many black holes for the unwary tech CEO to fall into, but two of the oldest and blackest are video phones and pocket TV.

Fairchild's first family of  ICs, called Micrologic launched in early 1961, were chips integrating three or four transistors and half a dozen diodes.

Thanks to IC Insights of Arizona for this one: The Ten Worst Years for the semiconductor market in the industry's history.

Is the Internet making people narrower? That was the theme of a talk to an Oxford conference last week by Harvard academic Ethan Zuckerman.

Further reductions in the prices of their transistors are announced by Semiconductors Ltd. Types SA495 and SA496 are now at the former "100" price of £4 10s.

So, 50 years ago this year, starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of September 28^th 1960.

'Oh dear', Ed confides to his diary, 'a major problem has come up just when we don't need it - our foundry says we have to pay more for our wafers or wait longer for them.'

It comes down to confidence. When a company screws up, the CEO has to take the hit, go public, be transparent, apologise and make amends.

The average ratio of accepted business plans to rejected business plans is 50:1, aacording to Hermann Hauser, founder of the VC firm Amadeus Capital. How does he separate the wheat from the chaff?

Only three of the top ten vacuum tube companies in 1950 became top ten transistor makers in 1955.

To be responsible for halting a customer's production line is about as bad as it gets for a chip company. To halt the production line of a customer as important as Nissan is awful.

Beautiful Harmony Semiconductor Inc - sounds catchy doesn't it - but, according to TechEye, this is the name which Marvell will use in China.

Thanks to VLSI Research for this one - the Top Ten manufacturers of PhotoVoltaic manufacturing equipment in 2009. They are:

Reports keep on coming from the German press that Infineon is still talking about selling its wireless division to Intel.

Japan's transistor production is expected to reach six million units a month by the end of the year - higher than that of the USA - according to a survey compiled by the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry.

So, 50 years ago this year, starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of September 28^th 1960.

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Good for Andy Grove. The co-founder and former chairman and CEO of Intel has pointed out to the Americans what should be obvious to them: they need more manufacturing jobs.

April's billion dollar purchase of Palm by HP is a reminder of how close Palm came to being British.

Some satisfaction for the bloodied and bruised employees and ex-employees of NXP lies in the revelation that the author of NXP's misfortunes, Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts (KKR) of New York, has seen its value drop from $26 billion to $6 billion between 2007 and today.

Once upon a time there was a CEO who licensed a logic emulation patent to Mentor Graphics to allow Mentor to sue a rival. The patent turned out to be fraudulent, and the CEO was charged with perjury.

Businessmen like businesses where they feel that, if they outspend the opposition, they can create competitive advantage.

The New York Times reports some hilarious evidence in the case against Dell that it sold faulty PCs.

Thanks to Yole Development for this one - the Top Ten MEMS Foundries with their estimated annual revenues:

Augmented Reality (AR) became a better known buzz-word last week when Qualcomm announced it was diversifying into AR chips.

A new automatic translation machine, designed to translate German and English into Japanese has been demonstrated by its inventor, Professor Katsuo Ohno of Kyushu University, at the radio equipment manufacturing plant of Mitsubishi Electric Co.

So, 50 years ago this year, starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of September 28^th 1960.

'Shortages, don't I love 'em', Ed confides to his diary, 'it's great having customers ring up begging for parts when the bastards are usually cancelling orders or trying to re-negotiate the price downwards.'

Cyrix, Rise Technology, Transmeta, IDT's WinChip, Meridian, Metaflow, MemoryLogix, Montalvo - all of these were failed x86 clone attempts - and, according to the New York Times, there was nearly another x86 clone from Sun.

Lord Arnold Weinstock, the long-time managing director of GEC, was pragmatic, and had little time for management theory.

If there's a technology which will reduce your investment, increase business and improve your product, you'd think a businessman would grab it with both hands. Unless you're a wireless telecoms operator.

There was once a company set up to market a microprocessor designed to power computers.

Magnetic RAM, Cross-Bar, Trapped Charge, Ferroelectric are all non-volatile memory technologies which I've heard of but, until yesterday, I hadn't heard of an antifuse-based NV memory.