Apple had only two years as the biggest buyer of semiconductors. It became the No.1 buyer in 2010, held the position in 2011 and slipped down to No.2 in 2012.
Interestingly, Samsung, the new No.1, bought (including internal purchases) $18.6bn worth of semiconductors in 2011 and…
Although LTE delivers a unified global standard, it has so far been deployed across 40 different frequencies, reports IHS, resulting in a ‘complex’ situation for equipment and component suppliers.
Nonetheless, IHS expects that LTE’s greater capabilities are a ‘force multiplier’ for smartphone innovation.
That expectation sits oddly alongside the…
Process-driven management is the bane of modern companies, says David Milne founding CEO of Wolfson Microelectronics.
“Process-driven management abolishes the need to think,” Milne tells me.
And ‘Think’, of course, was the iconic motto adopted for IBM by Thomas Watson Senior.
Once everyone in a company is fixed…
Time was when a semiconductor CEO who said he couldn’t see how to grow his company was seen as a wuss.
After all, the whole point about the semiconductor industry is that its product is pervasive – always finding new places to go, always finding new applications, always developing new…
How far can Intel’s margin fall before it’s in serious trouble? While most chip companies would kill for a 60%+ margin, as Intel has enjoyed for the last few years, Intel’s business model depends on it getting very high prices for its chips, and this might be…
‘Shrink to win’ is the exciting new slogan of TU Technologies.
“Growth is an old-hat strategy,” says Boz Carlotti, TU’s CEO, “we will succeed by going backwards. Backwards is the new forwards…
When I first met Paul Otellini, shortly after he’d been appointed boss of Intel, I paid him the compliment of doing what I used to do to his great fore-runner Andy Grove – ask him the toughest question I could.
To my surprise, Otellini got peeved. In his position…
Financial analysts are frightfully polite to execs but brutal in their judgments.
A bit like what you say to people at the party and what you say about them on the way home.
The analysts now rate Qualcomm as a more valuable company than Intel despite Intel having revenue of…