Electronic Business articles from December 2003

Electronic Business archives from December 2003

A CEO for bad times and good: why managing through the deep downturn led us to our choice for 2003 CEO of the Year.(Editor's Note)(Industry Overview)
December 1, 2003... Everyone knows the last few years haven't been good. The electronics industry has experienced the longest and deepest downturn in its history. Fortunately, things are beginning to look up. In November the Semiconductor Industry Association...

Making more waves.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... I would like to set the record straight, because several of my remarks in Tam Harbert's article "Making Waves in Washington" (November 2003, page 42) appear to have been taken out of context. First of all, the comment "The FCC doesn't pay...

Enforcing Moore's Law: the cost of improving performance is electrifying.(Chip Advisor)
December 1, 2003... Looking back at the history of semiconductor process technology, it's easy to see why we've become complacent about the pace of our progress. Every two years or so, we get a new technology generation that doubles the number of transistors on a...

Merry Christmas from Dell.(Consumer Electronics)
December 1, 2003... Michael Dell hopes you'll be buying a $189 digital camera and a $700 flat-panel TV from him this holiday season. His company is the latest in a handful of computer companies that are entering the consumer electronics market this year, hoping to...

Down year ends on an up note: after hitting a five-year low in the first quarter, venture capital investing stabilizes.(Finance)(2003)(Industry Overview)
December 1, 2003... This year's slight rise in venture capital funding reminds Mark Jensen, national director of venture capital services for Deloitte & Touche, of the title of a 1960s-era book: Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. Nobody's predicting a...

Scott McNealy's dilemma: Sun is paying the price for misjudging disruptive technologies.(Management)
December 1, 2003... Cut the workforce by 20 percent. Slash research and development. Spin off Java. Get a real Linux strategy. Analysts offered these and other bits of unsolicited advice to CEO Scott McNealy in early October, after Sun Microsystems revised its...

Transmeta's do-over: the Efficeon chip is the second--and maybe last--chance for microprocessor company.(Profile)
December 1, 2003... The history of electronics is rife with failed companies that had good first products but never produced a second. Transmeta's first product had problems, but it now has a second product that stands up well to the competition. If this scrappy...

Follow the money: sales growth will come from previously unlikely regions.(Economic Outlook)
December 1, 2003... The metrics at the leading edge of the economic expansion cycle in industrial countries continue to improve worldwide. Economic growth has already restarted in most key countries and is beginning to ignite expansion in technology markets. The...

So you want to be a CEO? The seven smartest steps engineers can take toward the corner cubicle.(Management)
December 1, 2003... One of the unlamented fatalities of the economic bubble is the babyfaced CEO. If there were any poster children for the boom, they were those kids who had ambition and enthusiasm--but no experience. As we return to some semblance of economic...

Chips & panels spur new consumer gear: memory, logic and displays propel PDA, cell phone and camera markets.(Special Advertising Section)
December 1, 2003... Chips and TFT-LCD display panels have become critical components supporting multimedia functionality in today's consumer electronics products. OEMs competing in the fast-paced, highly competitive consumer electronics market need a broad range...

Cautious optimism ahead.(Business Barometer)
December 1, 2003... This month's polling of purchasing managers shows many positive signs for the electronics industry. A third of respondents believe that business conditions will improve over the next 30 days. Aided by a stronger economy and a drop in...

Sparking new speed: three Sun researchers hope to rev up speeds and eliminate on-chip wiring.(Semiconductors)
December 1, 2003... Ivan Sutherland questions the way things are done. The 65-year-old Sun Microsystems researcher says there is no law that says a microprocessor has to be on one chip or that the fastest way to connect two chips is over a wire across a printed...

Peace has broken out in EDA: with more cooperation and standards efforts, and fewer major lawsuits, the EDA market seems to have arrived at an era of relative harmony.(Electronic Design Automation)
December 1, 2003... It's not that competition is gone. Synopsys, Cadence Design Systems and Mentor Graphics are still battling each other on sales, and Magma Designs is still trying to displace Cadence and Synopsys in the layout space. But strikingly absent...

Born here, made there: OEMs struggle with supply chain issues as more manufacturing moves overseas.(Supply Chain Management)
December 1, 2003... Three years ago, executives at National Instruments (NI) didn't think they'd have much trouble duplicating in Hungary the supply chain serving its Austin, Texas, manufacturing plant. For one thing, NI had tight relationships with three...

Back to the future.(Pricing)
December 1, 2003... Motorola's decision to keep its component pricing to itself signals that the supply chain is returning to more-traditional business practices, market watchers say. Before the rise of outsourcing, OEMs and their component suppliers...

Will we boom? Will we bust? Evidence of recovery prompts hope that this upturn will be different.(Capital Equipment)
December 1, 2003... Now the question on everyone's lips is not, "Is the recovery real?" or "Is it sustainable?" but "Is the industry setting the stage for another boom/bust cycle?" To some, particularly component and critical-subsystem suppliers, it may seem...

Michael gets high Marks: Flextronics' CEO studies the world, observes what works and listens carefully to customers and his own managers.(CEO Of The Year)(Cover Story)
December 1, 2003... Observers of Flextronics International might have wondered if CEO Michael Marks had soldering paste on the brain when he bought land in Mexico, built a plant and asked suppliers to move there. It was 1995, and few contract manufacturers (CMs)...

Shuffling boards: Sarbanes-Oxley, Nasdaq and NYSE rules narrow director choices for high-tech companies.(Corporate Governance)
December 1, 2003... Synopsys scored a coup when it convinced Intel's CFO, Andy Bryant, to serve on its audit committee. But then came the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which prohibited any employee of a major customer of a company from serving on that company's...

The price is right: a slew of closed fabs has created a buyers' market for used chip-making equipment.(Capital Equipment)
December 1, 2003... IN THE PAST 18 MONTHS, chip maker Intersil more than doubled the capacity of its fab in Palm Bay, Fla. That alone sets it apart from the horde of semiconductor companies that retrenched, restructured and retreated during the worst downturn in...

Embracing standards and practices: can SoC designers do a better job at collaborating?(Commentary)
December 1, 2003... The SoC design industry is clearly an immature industry segment with relatively new participants, rapidly redefining itself. Many in this industry have their roots in businesses that revere individuality and aggressive competition, and most of...