Electronic Business articles from August 2005

Electronic Business archives from August 2005

Plainspoken plainsman: Jack Kilby left behind a great invention--and great civility.(Editor's Note)(Obituary)
August 1, 2005... When integrated chip inventor Jack Kilby died, this past June, I was interested to read that he had grown up in Great Bend, Kansas. Everyone is from somewhere, after all, but I'd actually visited rural Great Bend, the seat of Barton County,...

MEMS accelerometers pick up speed: finally, chips to protect products from clumsy users.(Microelectromechanical systems)
August 1, 2005... For roughly a decade, MEMS accelerometers have been making automobiles safer by triggering air bags in the event of a crash. But manufacturers of the tiny sensors have always had larger ambitions: a world filled with gadgets that sense and...

Don't get caught in the middle: look for the growth markets at the high and low ends of the economic scale.(ECONOMIC OUTLOOK)
August 1, 2005... Income distribution--the relative income shares of the rich and the poor--usually changes so slowly that it can be ignored in product planning. But electronics manufacturers that ignore it now risk being trapped in the middle when market growth...

Industry eyes SEC nominee: California's Cox friendly to innovation and high tech.(FINANCE)
August 1, 2005... As a California congressman, Christopher Cox developed a reputation or supporting high-tech innovation and business entrepreneurship. Now Cox, President Bush's nominee to become chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, may be high...

Silicon Valley East? New York's Hudson Valley joins a long list of wannabes.
August 1, 2005... Boston's Route 128. Austin's Silicon Prairie. Seattle's Silicon Forest. Scotland's Silicon Glen. Everyone wants what Silicon Valley has: a vibrant, self-perpetuating economy that takes a licking and keeps on ticking through boom and bust alike....

How to thrive in the face of low-cost offshore competition.(Response Management)(Advertisement)
August 1, 2005... You're losing market share and risk being overtaken by high-volume/ lowcost offshore competitors. You're doing everything you can to reverse declining sales and eroding margins, but it appears to be only a matter of time before you'll be out of...

How happy are tech workers? Job satisfaction seems to be a mixed bag.(MANAGEMENT)
August 1, 2005... With outsourcing creating a great deal of anxiety among electronics workers, some high-tech companies are looking outside of their four walls to improve company morale. At Intel, for example, dozens of employees have been attending a series of...

Apple's not-so-grand entrance: how will the company's shift to Intel affect the industry?(Semiconductors)
August 1, 2005... Apple Computer's recent embrace of Intel processors for its Macintosh line of personal computers set the mainstream press abuzz. Only hours after the announcement at the company's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco in June 2005,...

Specialty strategies: smaller foundry players are finding profitable niches.
August 1, 2005... When it comes to outsourced semiconductor manufacturing, it's sometimes hard to see past the industry's Taiwan-based powerhouses, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) and United Microelectronics (UMC), which together accounted for almost...

Piracy on the high SystemCs: is bootlegged software slowing industry growth?(Electronic Design Automation)
August 1, 2005... The amount of software pirated each year is roughly 10 times the yearly revenues of the entire EDA industry, according to the nonprofit Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). Although those purloined programs come from vendors such...

Corralling contracts: all contract terms--not just pricing--should be renegotiated frequently.(Supply Chain Management)
August 1, 2005... Given the rapid rate of change in the electronics industry, it's nearly inconceivable that contracts between supply chains partners can be drawn up, signed, and then shelved for five years. That's five--yes, five--years. As a point of...

Inspecting the new inspection tools: can Applied take a chunk of KLA-Tencor's business?(Capital Equipment)
August 1, 2005... As this issue of ELECTRONIC BUSINESS went to press, Semicon West, the annual chip equipment and materials trade show in San Francisco, was getting under way, as was the full-court press of marketing and PR that always precedes this show. With...

Zander's balancing act: Motorola's divisions need to work better--and work better together.(PROFILE)
August 1, 2005... When he took over as chairman and CEO of technology behemoth Motorola in the first few days of 2004, Ed Zander must have felt as though he'd agreed to cross a tightrope while juggling axes and bowling bowls. By the time Zander, formerly the...

The EB 300.(Illustration)(Cover Story)
August 1, 2005... THE EB 300 The RANKINGS CALENDAR YEAR 2004 Electronics revenues Total Rank ...

The Tao of innovation: it's small business versus big government in the world's largest market.(FINANCE)
August 1, 2005... LAUNCHING A SEMICONDUCTOR STARTUP in the United States is not for the faint of heart. In an industry that demands constant innovation, the wheels of funding and finance can seem to turn at geological speed. The government requires so many...