September 2010 Archives

There was once a company which, in 1970, built a computer using 8-bit MOS microprocessors.

The cannibalisation of the notebook market by the advent of netbooks is apparently well underway as ODMs turn away from notebook manufacturing.

Ten years on from when the wireless industry was skinned of £23 billion in the UK 3G licence auction, you tend to wonder whether the industry would have been better off boycotting the event.

Thanks to IC Insights for this - the ten worst performing product segments of the IC industry. It's forecast to be such a good year this year, that eight of the ten worst-performing products are expected to enjoy double digit growth.

Last week Larry Ellison said he wanted to buy chip companies, this week he's suing one.

'The Russian attitude to employing women scientists and engineers was recently discussed by two British women engineers on returning from a fortnight's visit to Russia.'

So, 50 years ago this year, starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of October 19^th 1960.

'The Brats have been causing trouble again,' Ed writes in his diary.

We are about to see the greatest destruction of wealth since the banks nearly bankrupted the world economy.

"We managed to build Acorn Computers up into a £100 million company on capital of  £100," says Hermann Hauser, founding CEO of Acorn and now boss of venture capitalist Amadeus Capital Partners.

Last Friday morning a post called 'Can ARM get into servers?' produced some  interesting responses which are well worth reproduction.

The more you look at the Nokia fiasco, the odder it looks. The annual R&D budget tops $7.5 billion, the number of people working in R&D is 17,000, yet they can't produce a stream of market-leading devices. The N8 launch is now delayed.

Who leant on the CEO of Best Buy?

There's nothing new under the hi-tec sun and Intel's latest wheeze of selling crippled chips which can be fully-enabled for a $50 'upgrade' is a trick pioneered 40 years ago by IBM.

'The new factory for Texas instruments in Manton Lane, Bedford, scheduled for occupation in early December, is now nearing completion. It is an example of the latest developments in industrial architecture and technique.'

So, 50 years ago this year, starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of October 19^th 1960.

'Phone call today from the Chairman of our lead VC company ', Ed writes in hi his diary, 'cheeky bugger tells me I need to get fit for the IPO roadshow and has booked me into his bloody gym - some swanky sweat-hole in Mayfair.

Mike Cowan, deviser of the Cowan LRA Model for forecasting semiconductor sales, very kindly sent me this comparison of the various analysts' estimates for semiconductor growth in 2010. He added an explanation of his approach.

In 1980, Pasquale Pistorio, who took SGS-Ates (now STMicroelectronics) from a bankrupt mid-sized Italian chip company to a worldwide Top 5 semiconductor company with highly profitable annual sales of $10 billion, had a tough choice to make.

How big a deal is the ARM move on servers?

Once upon a time a telecommunications service was launched in Britain which allowed you to make a call but didn't allow you to receive a call.

The bloodbath at the top of Nokia could claim the most famous scalp of all - Jorma Ollila - who took over Nokia's unprofitable mobile phone business in 1992 and turned it into the world leader.

Thanks to Amazon for this one. Amazon can pick up when someone highlights a passage in a book being read on a Kindle. Here in descending order of number of highlights ate the ten most highlighted passages on Kindle:

Apart from Moore's Law, the most famous IC industry dictum came from another Intel co-founder - Andy Grove's: "We in the semiconductor industry know that only the paranoid survive."

Predictions of the maturity of the semiconductor industry have always been premature.  In fact the industry's cyclicality is getting wilder.

'Progress in the development of optical reading machines has leapt ahead in the past twelve months. There are now seven photoelectric reading machines commercially available, compared with two less than a year ago.'

So, 50 years ago this year, starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of October 19^th 1960.

Poor old Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. Can you imagine climbing all the way to the top of Nokia, achieving a lifetime's ambition, your hands on the levers of the most magnificent mobile phone manufacturing operation known to man, what can go wrong?

When ARM's founding CEO Sir Robin Saxby was selling chips for Motorola, he came up against the perennial dog-fight between the chip guy and the systems guy.

Can engineering win out over marketing muscle? ARM's Cortex A-15 is aimed at mobile computing, advanced smartbooks and servers. Intel's MDF is aimed at keeping rivals out of mobile computing and servers, while levering x86 into smartphones.

There was once an IBM computer designer, responsible for the company's highly successful 32-bit System 360 series, who left the company and set up his own computer manufacturing company.

This company was so successful that, at one time, it gained 24% of the worldwide mainframe computer business.

It made machines which were interchangeable with IBM machines but cheaper.

The company's secret sauce was air-cooled super-high-speed ECL ICs.

But when IBM changed to CMOS, and engineered it to run fast, the company could not match IBM on cost, and it was taken over by Fujitsu.

MORAL: Don't Bet Against CMOS

Which is the odd one out:  unicorn, hydra, phoenix, dragon, vampire, smartbook?

Who would want to work for a company where Larry Ellison is the CEO and Mark Hurd the President?

Thanks to IC Insights for this one, the Top Ten semiconductor manufacturers in Q2 2010.

It's enough to turn you communist. According to the US Institute for Policy Studies, the companies which laid off the most people last year, paid their CEOs the highest remuneration.

'A recent article by John Gordon in the Sunday Express quotes the case of an £11-a-week fitter, employed by the Coal Board, who invented a machine which is saving the Board £30,000 a year.

The fitter's reward was a gift of £100 and this was not even per annum.'

So, 50 years ago this year, starts a story in the section 'The Soviet Scene' in Electronics Weekly's edition of October 19^th 1960, written by EW's Soviet Affairs Correspondent.

'A friend of mine who's been through the IPO process as CEO lets me in on a wizzo wheeze where I could get round the 180 day lock-up provision in my contract stopping me cashing in my shares,' Ed confides to his diary.

It's good to see real business leadership in action rather than moneymen jiggery-pokering around to make it look like they're achieving something. Sanjay Jha, co-CEO of Motorola, did it the old-fashioned way by making products people want to buy.

It didn't take long for the Fairchild Semiconductor Silicon Valley venture capital-backed start-up business model to get copied.

Hurrah. The waterproof mobile phone is almost here. Last week Murata launched a 0.9 mm thick piezoelectric loudspeaker that is waterproof, and says a quarter of all mobile phones launched in Japan this year will be waterproof.

Nearly 40 years ago a company was founded to sell electronic games machines.

Good to hear the EC is going to help 512 sacked NXP workers with a €1.8 million contribution to a €2.8 billion package to help them get re-employed. But it's interesting to hear the reasons for the award as argued by the Dutch government in its application for the EC contribution.

Semiconductor shortages are now hitting the ODM and EMS manufacturers. They are the latest sector to suffer after shortages complaints from the automotive, telecoms infrastructure and smartphone manufacturers.

Thanks to iSuppli for this one - the expected top ten  purchasers of ICs in 2010 and 2011: