Electronic Business articles from January 2005

Electronic Business archives from January 2005

This little piggy: Congress favors spending on pork over innovation.(Editor's Note)(Editorial)
January 1, 2005... Evidently the United States Congress thinks there are more important things to spend money on than basic science and technology research. Last month President Bush signed into law a $388 billion spending bill sent to him by Congress; it covered...

Succeeding in IP relationships: what to look out for from a technical and a business standpoint.(Commentary)(intellectual property)
January 1, 2005... Global companies developing today's sophisticated ICs frequently purchase intellectual property (IP) from third-party sources in an effort to minimize R&D costs and shorten the time to market for core product lines. However, the reality is that...

Playing the China card: chip makers hope open source taps a vast potential market.(Market Strategies)
January 1, 2005... China wants options in the computing platforms it chooses for its government offices, universities, businesses and just plain folks. It doesn't want to get squeezed in the kind of vise grip Microsoft and Intel have on the West, especially the...

Little sensors, big bucks: smart dust is ready to hit the market.(Technology)
January 1, 2005... If the electronics revolution has led to smart toys and smart bombs, then why not smart dust? And in fact, smart dust, the nickname for wireless sensor networks, is already a reality. These networks of "motes," or small and low-power...

Pro forma earnings are alive and well: SEC regulations haven't stopped companies from putting their best numbers forward.(Finance)(Securities & Exchange Commission)
January 1, 2005... Although most companies are sticking to the letter of a regulation designed to curb the abuse of pro forma earnings numbers, some are not adhering to the spirit of the two-year-old rule, say analysts. Pro forma numbers are financial metrics...

Blogs for business? Strip away the hype, and find a newly useful tool for communication.(Communications)(Weblogs)
January 1, 2005... Forget about all the hype you've heard about blogs (a.k.a. Web logs) as the latest outlet for personal journalism. It turns out they also have a remarkable ability to aid communication in business, whether within internal workgroups or among...

Where's the growth? Economic prospects deteriorate in Europe, Japan and Korea.(Economic Outlook)
January 1, 2005... Trends in economic growth don't bode well for the electronics industry. In the countries using the euro, along with Japan and Korea, growth has been surprisingly weak recently and has been marked down again in most forecasts for 2005. Together,...

Order early and often.(Business Barometer)(Electronics industry)(Illustration)
January 1, 2005... This month's polling of purchasing managers shows that almost a third of respondents expect overall business conditions to improve. This is the third month that optimism in the electronics market continues to gain steam. With the stock market...

Digital radio taking off: satellite radio's success prompts terrestrial broadcasters to go digital.(Semiconductors)
January 1, 2005... Television and recorded music have been reinvented in recent years, with the advent of higher-quality digital content. Now, the radio industry also is going digital, raising the hopes of semiconductor makers, which hope to supply chips for...

Video to go: hot at CES: portable media players and new digital home electronics.(Consumer Electronics)(Consumer Electronics Show)
January 1, 2005... It used to be that all technology companies, big and small, made the pilgrimage to Las Vegas once a year to a gigantic trade show, and that show was called Comdex. What a difference a year or two makes. Falling attendance at Comdex--to the...

Finding new growth in IP: but is it really a good business for EDA firms?(Electronics Design Automation)(intellectual property)
January 1, 2005... With EDA software revenues remaining relatively flat over he past few years, it's not surprising that the big EDA firms are trying to find new revenue sources. It's not clear, however, whether investments in intellectual property (IP) are...

Greater than the sum of its parts: five regional EMS companies form a global alliance.(Supply Chain Management)(electronics manufacturing services)
January 1, 2005... Five years ago, midtier electronics manufacturing services (EMS) provider Note was facing many of the same problems confronting its like-size brethren. It didn't have a global presence, and it was getting pressure from customers to manufacture...

FPD becoming a tempting option: emerging TV applications lure Agilent Technologies.(Capital Equipment)(flat-panel display)
January 1, 2005... It's really no surprise that the flat-panel display (FPD) industry is an attractive area for semiconductor supply chain players looking to diversify. The FPD market is poised for big growth, at least through the end of the decade, driven by the...

Gaining leverage: LBO firms find a land of opportunity in the electronics industry.(Mergers And Acquisitions)(leveraged buyout)
January 1, 2005... Say "private equity" to most Silicon Valley executives, and they think "venture capital." VCs, who initially funded most of the young, energetic startups that have grown into tech giants, are part of the legend of the Valley. But now technology...

How KLA-Tencor yields innovation: a passion for learning produces profits in the chip process control market.(Profile)(Cover Story)
January 1, 2005... Like any other good CEO, Ken Schroeder of KLA-Tencor spends a lot of time thinking about his employees. But unlike most other CEOs, he spends a lot of time thinking about what they know and what they still need to learn. "We've been...

Decisions, decisions: choosing the right chip technology doesn't always have to do with cost.(Custom Chips)
January 1, 2005... AS THE COSTS OF ASICs HAVE SKYROCKETED, vendors have striven to fill in the gap between what FPGAs, at one end of the complexity spectrum, and ASICs, at the other end, can offer, with the concept of structured ASICs. The compromise of...