January 2009 Archives

"Technology companies sound the alert" was a headline on the front page of the Financial Times today. 

But I read something else even more worrying yesterday.

Oh dear, ultra wideband (UWB), the very high speed version of Bluetooth is feeling the effects of the credit crunch.   

Chip suppliers seem to be exiting the market. According to market watcher In-Stat, there are now four fewer UWB chip makers than there were in the middle of 2008.

Is this the begining of the end for UWB?  

The Sinclair QL is 25 years old this week which makes it one of the very first personal computers to hit the market. 

Thanks to Clive Akass for this chunk of nostalgia and Clive points out that the QL was launched 12 days before the Apple Mac, with its monochrome mouse-driven graphical interface.

Touchscreen technology may be selling like hot-cakes in mobiles and other consumer devices, but technology firms want to improve it.

They want to put a 'click' back in to touch control.

The way this is done is a technique called bending wave haptic technology, and Cambridge-based NXT is working to add haptic technology to touchscreens.

Parallel processing is not only useful in improving the power efficiency of processors, parallel thought can sometimes help when working what is going on in the electronics industry.      

For example, take Qualcomm's recent demonstration of Google's Android operating system running on its Snapdragon chipset.

What makes this interesting is what is going on inside the Apple iPhone.

The mobile basestation market is a difficult place to be right now. Not only do suppliers have to worry about the inevitable impact of the global downturn they are facing the bigger threat of saturated handset markets in most countries.
 

According to the marketwatcher, In-Stat, basestation semiconductor revenue will decline an average of 12.3% per year from 2008-2012.