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December 23, 2006

Future Horizons sees 10% growth in 06

Had it not been for lower than expected prices, the semiconductor industry would have grown 20 per cent this year, says Future Horizons. As it is, the market looks to have grown ten per cent.

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WiMAX, WiFi, RFID, NFC, 3G, AMD, TI and Intel

This is the final entry on this site for 2006, a year in which WiMAX stuttered, UWB faltered, Near Field Communication struggled to establish itself, RFID established itself, WiFi strengthened strongly and extended its scope, cellular telephony garnered oodles of dosh but lacked direction as high-end phones failed to find market favour, AMD and Texas Instruments flourished, and Intel wilted.

Continue reading "WiMAX, WiFi, RFID, NFC, 3G, AMD, TI and Intel" »

January 3, 2007

ASIC for the chop at 45nm

ASIC design may come to end to an end at 45nm, killed by rising cost and lengthening time-to-market.

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January 4, 2007

Analogue boom squeezes IC design talent

Analogue chips have been doing well, with companies like Linear Technology Corporation making 78 per cent margins, and the market's set to get better this year, but where will the designers come from?

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January 8, 2007

Gates and Gondolas


A couple of floors below where Bill Gates was delivering his keynote to the 40th Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last night, newly married couples and tourists were being ferried around canals on gondolas.

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January 11, 2007

Getting to Gates

Hearing a Bill Gates keynote for the first time is an experience, especially if it’s shared with 3,500 people.

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January 15, 2007

CES not so interesting

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) have produced a pack of playing cards on each of which was an interesting fact about CES.

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January 17, 2007

CEA: 'Consumers adopting earlier.'

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) believes that consumers are turning into early, or at least earlier, adopters.

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January 19, 2007

Dell slams telecoms industry

Michael Dell blamed the telecom industry, at CES, for holding up the development of the digital home and challenged the industry to accelerate the deployment of fibre to the home.

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January 23, 2007

NXP, LEDs and the future of lighting

LEDs are the future of lighting. Or are they? One person who is banking that they will be is the CEO of NXP Semiconductors, Frans van Houten.

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Mr Breeze the Marketing Genius

The most remarkable marketing guy is operating out of a shanty bar across the road from the famous Mullins Beach Bar (now called Mannie’s Suga Suga) which is
a kilometre or two south of Speightstown on the west coastal road of Barbados.

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January 30, 2007

Happy Days

It’s January. April is a couple of months away. Skies are grey. But 2007 is going to be a good year, according to IFS2007, a seminar run by analysts Future Horizons in London this week.

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January 31, 2007

Can Bill count?

There was Bill Gates on the telly on Wednesday morning telling the Sky News interviewer that Microsoft does what it can to make the price of its products uniform in the different countries in which it sells them across the world.

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February 9, 2007

Web-Sites by Attila, Stalin, Genghis, Hitler and Mao

Why do companies confine themselves to the descendants of Hitler, Attila, Stalin Genghis and Mao for designing websites?

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February 12, 2007

Solutions and Slag

‘Delivering supply chain solutions’ was written on the side of the truck outside the office on Wednesday. What could be inside? Answer: It was a general delivery truck belonging to a carrier delivering all and sundry to all and sundry. Supply chain solutions indeed!

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May 1, 2007

Coonsolidation? Or De-Consolidation? By John Daane

Is the industry consolidating or de-consolidating? Recently I had a discussion on the topic with John Daane, CEO of Altera.


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May 3, 2007

Tremendous Change SNAFU

Tremendous change is on the way in the high-tech industry which means that everything is continuing as normal, it was said at the opening of the Future Horizons IEF 2007 meeting which started at 8:30 this morning at a hotel on a beach south of Athens.

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Great Day At IEF2007

A cracking good first day for the IEF 2007. The sun shone. The hotel was right on the beach. You could get sand under your toes in the coffee breaks.

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May 31, 2007

Consolidation? Or De-Consolidation? By John Daane

Is the industry consolidating or de-consolidating? Recently I had a discussion on the topic with John Daane, CEO of Altera.

Continue reading "Consolidation? Or De-Consolidation? By John Daane" »

June 5, 2007

Can Apple Save the Smartphone and the SSD Laptop?

Apple could perform a notable double whammy this month by saving both the smartphone market and the solid state laptop market.

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June 6, 2007

Is Wintel Withering?

Is Wintel withering? First Dell, then Toshiba, erstwhile staunch Intel-ites, let in the alien hordes of AMD, then Dell goes back to selling PCs with an old OS after Microsoft Vista bombs.

Continue reading "Is Wintel Withering?" »

June 7, 2007

Girlish Hysterics at the Analysts

Girlish hysterics which have seen analysts slash their forecast for the year, now turn out to have been just that, hysterics caused by false assumptions based on one quarter's figures

Continue reading "Girlish Hysterics at the Analysts" »

June 8, 2007

Capex to Grow 2-3 Per cent says SEMI

SEMI, the equipment people, have come up with encouraging industry news - that device manufacturers will only increase their capital spending on equipment by three per cent and their spending on fab construction by between four to five per cent this year.

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June 15, 2007

I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue

Being a high-tech CEO, and being certain about anything, appear to be incompatible these days.

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June 27, 2007

Plus Ca Change And About Time Too.

Unexpected mega-shifts are appearing in the industry which signalling a rearrangement in the balance of power in various markets.

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July 19, 2007

Whore's Drawers At The Analysts

Lawksa-mercy what a laugh, the rebounding price of memory might get all those semiconductor industry analysts having to put their forecasts up again.

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July 24, 2007

Chaos Theory For Semiconductor Forecasting

The difficulties of forecasting the semiconductor industry have prompted analysts Future Horizons to resort to the application of chaos theory.

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July 30, 2007

Stormy Weather For Chips

It’s been a pretty miserable Q2 for the chip sector. Although the semiconductor industry’s overall revenues declined sequentially by only 1 per cent in Q2 (after a 6 per cent decline in Q1), many companies have found profits elusive.

Continue reading "Stormy Weather For Chips" »

September 4, 2007

It's Always Better In The Second Half Of The Year

So here we are, two months into the second half of the year when things should get better. Poor results in the first half are traditionally spiced with the prediction that things will turn up in the second. As STMicroelectronics’ chief economist, Jean-Philippe Dauvin says: “I wish I could always live in the second half of the year.”

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September 21, 2007

Sharp-Pioneer Deal Done; Sanyo, Toshiba-Sony next?

The Sharp-Pioneer tie-up, announced yesterday, and the purchase of Sanyo Semiconductor reported today, reflect a growing trend in Japan to look for amalgamations and restructurings in the technology industry. Another such deal, expected soon, is the merger of Sony Semiconductor with Toshiba.

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September 25, 2007

Black Ships and M&A

It’s an interesting commentary on human nature to see the mix of affection and wariness in the attitude of Japan to Commodore Matthew Perry who sailed with four ships into Tokyo Bay on March 31st 1854 to the astonishment of the locals who had never seen steamships before.

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December 17, 2007

IBM Spreading Development Dollars

Fresh from success in BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), IBM is to spread its wings, and its market development dollars, across a new range of geographies: Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, Vietnam, the Philippines, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Argentina, Chile and Peru, according to an internal IBM memo quoted in the New York Times.

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TI, Freescale Hit By Cellphone Woes

Freescale and Texas Instruments have been hit by cellphone woes, with TI facing a 3.4 per cent decline in revenues and said to be laying off 400 people in Dallas, and Freescale said to be facing a 10.7 per cent decline in 2007 chip sales primarily because of the weakness in the cellphone business of its main customer, Motorola.

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January 10, 2008

Can Intel Ever Succeed Without A Monopoly?

The news from CES 2008 that Intel is to try its hand again at mobile telecoms and consumer chips leads one to ask the question: Can Intel succeed in markets where it doesn’t have a monopoly?

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January 11, 2008

2008 A Good Year For Semis

According to semiconductor industry folk-lore this should be a very good year for the chip industry.

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January 25, 2008

Buy On Rumour; Sell On News

Are Americans more gullible than the rest of the world? It seems that all the rumours that AMD and IBM will merge have come out of the US, while those who think the idea daft are non-Americans.

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February 21, 2008

Paul Otellini Denies Macro-Economics

Someone calling himself Paul Otellini has responded somewhat unfavourably to a report carried by Barron’s that Goldman Sachs has taken Intel off its ‘Conviction Buy List’.

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March 14, 2008

The Song The Sirens Sing

It must be hellish being a CEO these days. You can’t swan around bathed in glory when you’ve got stock market analysts snapping at your heels telling you they won’t recommend people to buy your shares unless you do what they say.

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July 24, 2008

Intel About To Try ASSPs

Today Intel is, apparently, going to announce its entry into the ASSP business, except that it has decided to call its ASSP products SOCs. But, although these products aren't being sold yet, Intel's description of its SOCs makes them sound like ASSPs which perform similar functions to ASSPs and, therefore, probably are ASSPs.

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August 8, 2008

The Hokey Cokey Man

For Intel, another day means another diversification. Even as it tries, reportedly, to sell to Seagate its share in its last diversification -  the NAND jv with Micron - Intel is diversifying into new areas: application specific microcontrollers, graphics processors, Wimax,  and, of course, Atom.

 

 

 

Continue reading "The Hokey Cokey Man" »

August 7, 2008

Surprise Surprise, It's DD Growth-Time

The semiconductor industry always surprises. Now, when gloomsters from economists to politicians to bankers to retailers to manufacturers and pundits are predicting a bleak economic year, the semiconductor industry is booming.

 

 

 

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November 24, 2008

Does Anyone have A Clue?

One of the interesting things about this financial downturn is that no one really has a clue what's going to happen.

 

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December 11, 2008

Semi Stocks A Great Bargain, says Financial Times

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

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December 29, 2008

Solar Panel Industry To Go As Nutty As The Memory Industry.

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.

 

Continue reading "Solar Panel Industry To Go As Nutty As The Memory Industry." »

January 5, 2009

Good For George! Semis Up 5.6%

Good for George! "The worldwide economic crisis is having an impact on demand for semiconductors, but to a lesser degree than some other major industry sectors", says George Scalise, president of the Semiconductor Industry Association, "not all segments of the industry are being affected equally by the downturn. The memory market which has been under severe price pressure throughout the year has seen sales decline significantly while many other product sectors have year to date sales above 2007 levels."

 

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January 19, 2009

Intel's Credit Crunch Concerns

Intel produced, in its year-end results, an interesting list of the effects which the credit crunch might have on its business.

 

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January 23, 2009

Will Intel Change Its Business Model To Compete In Netbooks?

Will Intel have to change its business model to compete in the netbook market? After all Intel likes fat margins on its CPUs, while netbook CPUs are going to be low-margin, and Intel builds its fabs for high performance, while netbook CPUs require low-power CPUs - or they will when ARM-based netbook CPUs hit the market later this year.

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January 27, 2009

Has Intel Scored A Spectacular Own Goal?

Has Intel scored the most spectacular own goal with its Atom microprocessor? After all, Intel and Microsoft did an amazing job in keeping PC prices high for about 25 years when Moore's Law said the prices should have halved every eighteen months.

 

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January 28, 2009

Horrors

Crikey Moses. The chip market fell 22.5 per cent in Q4, could fall another 20 per cent in Q1, and may be 28 per cent down in 2009, according to Future Horizons at the company's International Forecast Seminar 2009 (IFS2009) in London yesterday.

 

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February 9, 2009

Cheer Up. It Will Be Better In The Second Half Of The Year

Don't worry about recession in the semiconductor industry, it won't be lasting all year. That was the message from semiconductor industry analyst Bill McClean of IC Insights to the recent ISS meeting arranged by SEMI the trade body for semiconductor production equipment and materials suppliers.

 

 

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March 16, 2009

Are Things Getting Better?

Could things be about to get better? The Philadelphia SOX is going up - not by much but it's up 2.45 per cent this year. TSMC, a harbinger of industry trends, has increased its revenue forecast citing Chinese ordering. Intel, Adobe, Sun, Cisco, Google, Apple, HP and Applied  - the elite of tech - saw significant share price gains last week.

 

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March 24, 2009

It's Off To The Races Again

It's off to the races, guys. The S&P 500 had its biggest rise in 60 years over the last ten days - up 22 per cent. The Japanese Nikkei is up 20 per cent from its March 10th, 20 year low. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index is up 21 per cent since March 9. The Philadelphia SOX has gone from 188 to 234 in a couple of weeks.

 

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April 15, 2009

Semi CEOs Call The Up-Turn

When the CEOs of major constituents of the chip business publicly announce their expectation of recovery, the chances are that  the horrendous slump in demand in Q4 08 and Q109 took the industry to the bottom in one sharp jolt, and that the trend is now upwards and to the right.

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April 28, 2009

The Million Dollar A Year Doorman

To take a pay freeze when you're earning $12m a year like the boss of Intel, or $5m a year if you're a senior Intel exec, might seem like a meaningful gesture, but the directors of Japan's Sharp Electronics are said have agreed to a pay cut of up to 50 per cent.

 

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May 5, 2009

It's Looking Good

It looks as if the semiconductor sector will lead the world out of  recession. Since mid-March, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) has risen from 190 to over 270.

 

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May 11, 2009

How To Sell A Pig In A Poke

An idea for getting the IPO market up and running again has been proposed by Todd Dagres, founder and general partner in the US investment company Spark Capital.

 

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May 18, 2009

The Good Dutch Girl And The Californian Marketing Man

It was surreal listening to Intel defend itself against the EC's fine last week. The two sides were just miles apart. It was a sort of 'Yes you did; No I didn't' type of ding-dong. 

  

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May 21, 2009

China Leads Semi Recovery; Semis Lead The World Recovery.

When China's OEMs, ODMs, and contract manufacturers start seeing a manufacturing  upturn, the whole world can breathe a sigh of relief that the economic worst is over.

 SMIC, the Shanghai foundry company, is now saying that orders from Chinese end product manufacturers are picking up fast.

 

Continue reading "China Leads Semi Recovery; Semis Lead The World Recovery." »

June 1, 2009

Why Do Semi Analysts Ignore A Key Apps Market - Pets?

When you go to conferences and listen to the lists of applications into which ICs are going, and will be going into in the future, no one ever mentions the pet market. But, according to the New York Times, Americans spend $43 billion on their pets every year and a fair whack of that goes into electronic gadgets for pets.

 

  

Continue reading "Why Do Semi Analysts Ignore A Key Apps Market - Pets?" »

May 29, 2009

IPO Market Coming Back

Financial people are funny. Publicly, on the telly, they make their trade sound serious and statistics-based but, once let loose on the trading floor, it's the smell of blood, the collective adrenalin surge of the pack, that seem to fuel their decisions. Last week the US IPO market came roaring back.

 

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June 12, 2009

Things Are Getting Better, say OECD, NIESR and ONS

The rate of increase in American unemployment reduced in May, after increasing for the previous 16 months, and that's a signal that the economic recovery is under way, according to the OECD, while the ONS and NIESR see the UK economy beginning to grow again.

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June 17, 2009

Bank Bail-Out An 'Inspired Trade', Says Economist.

Could the banking bail-out be an 'inspired trade' which will lead to a profit for the governments which re-capitalised the failing bankers? Well, Yes, according to chief international economist at ING, Rob Carnell.

 

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June 29, 2009

Europe Is Second Largest Electronics Producing Region.

The electronics industry is worth €1.14 trillion, compared to the car industry's €1.8 trillion. Half of the industry's production comes from Asia, and half of the industry is in the data processing and telecommunications sectors.

 

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July 2, 2009

Good Old EU (Again): Cheaper Calls And Texts

To start two posts in a week with 'Good Old EU' is totally unexpected. On Tuesday it was the EU's action in standardising mobile phone chargers, now it's bringing down the cost of phone calls and texting while abroad.

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July 3, 2009

Will Q3 Be A Good One?

Is end demand for semiconductors beginning to grow? Some analysts seem to think that Q3 could see a return to growth in real end-user demand.

 

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About Markets

This page contains an archive of all entries posted to Mannerisms in the Markets category. They are listed from oldest to newest.

Manufacturing is the previous category.

Memory is the next category.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

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