Electronic Business articles from July 2000

Electronic Business archives from July 2000

Internet taxation: The emperor has no clothes.(Government Activity)
July 1, 2000... Just when I was convinced that the arrogance of the high-tech industry had no bounds, along comes a solitary voice of wisdom, honesty and humility, publicly pointing out that it doesn't matter if a sale is wrapped up in pretty, new digital...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2000... A THIEF IS A THIEF Thanks for your excellent article on the Economic Espionage Act ("Keeping Secrets," May 2000, page 104). I believe this to be a very important problem facing business today, so I appreciate your exploring it. I...

Reinventing photography.(digital cameras)(Technology Information)
July 1, 2000... One of the truisms of technology forecasting is that we tend to overestimate the impact of new technologies in the short term, while underestimating their long-term impact. Nowhere is this more true than with the digitization of media. At...

Protection for 'trade dress'.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 1, 2000... One of the most unusual intellectual property rights has been the right to protect the appearance of a product-such as the shape of a desktop PC--as "trade dress." Without a patent or copyright, the imitation of a product's appearance has...

Employer costs rise; margins get squeezed.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 1, 2000... It's been a long time in coming, but higher wage and benefit inflation has finally arrived with a vengeance. The nation's unemployment rate has been at or near record lows for the better part of two years now, and it was puzzling that tight...

European 3G auctions: There must be a better way.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 1, 2000... The third-generation (3G) standard for mobile telephony is expected to become the global standard, superseding the various mobile phone standards used around the world today. But the way that European countries are doling out the spectrum is...

Q1 VC investments hit record--again.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 1, 2000... Stock market may put damper on Q2 While the bipolar behavior of the stock market has not dampened venture capitalists' enthusiasm for investment, warning bells set off during the first quarter have VC market researchers hedging their bets...

Unhappy marriages.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 1, 2000... Ounce of diligence is better than a pound of litigation in CM merges With merger mania among contract manufacturers (CMs) continuing at a brisk pace, (see charts) it seems inevitable that not all marriages are happy ones. Consider...

Higher interest and unemployment rates bring more volatility.(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... With a rise in the unemployment rate and interest rates, July shows some of our earlier optimism dwindling. Almost one in every five purchasing managers believes that overall business conditions will decrease in the next 60 days. Companies are...

Hot summer hit: GPRS?(Company Business and Marketing)
July 1, 2000... Analysts predict a wave of mobile phones and services based on new packet-switched network In the world of the global system for mobile communications (GSM)--which is most of the planet except for the United States--there's a revolution...

Churn, baby, churn.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 1, 2000... Wireless subscribers show little loyalty Cellular phones are getting cheaper, and the new millennium has fueled the market for wireless, portable devices. This booming market is good news for wireless service providers, but big projections...

Reaching for higher fruit.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 1, 2000... CMs may face a tough market sooner than expected It's hard to imagine the outsourced-manufacturing market running out of steam anytime soon. Contract manufacturers (CMs) continue to see revenue growth rates of 25% to 100% per year. Most CM...

Cellular concerns.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 1, 2000... Demand is booming, but should chipmakers beware? The cellular market has been on an absolute tear since the mid-1990s, with worldwide handset production growing almost 60% annually since 1996 and subscriber numbers doubling every few years....

Made in the U.S.A.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 1, 2000... U.S. high-tech exports hit a record high U.S. high-tech firms have not only helped to create one of the strongest economies ever, but are adding luster back to the old saying: "Made in the USA." According to a recent report from the...

Merchant IP market growing.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 1, 2000... New entrants gaining share Although still in its infancy, the merchant IP market is attracting a growing number of players that are beginning to nip share away from the market leaders. A year ago, the top eight players in IP held 82%...

Patently obvious?(Government Activity)
July 1, 2000... Uproar over business-method patents prompts PTO changes The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) increasingly has come under heavy criticism for not keeping pace with technology innovations, particularly in the areas of software and the...

Deja vu.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 1, 2000... Caution should prevail in developing re-hire employment policies In the Biblical parable, the return of the prodigal son is a time for great rejoicing. In the current high-tech job market, the return of the prodigal employee may be cause...

Online security: Lock your doors.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 1, 2000... In February, we saw an unprecedented salvo of denial-of-service attacks against major e-commerce sites, including Yahoo Inc., EBay Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. These attacks have cost millions of dollars in lost revenue, not to mention the...

STORE WARS.(Company Operations)
July 1, 2000... Wherever he looks, MICHAEL RUETTGERS sees storage. He wants to manage all of it Annoyed, Michael C. Ruettgers stares without blinking. I'm not talking about the steely gaze that seems to be standard issue for Fortune 500 CEOs. Nor is this...

Ready, Fire, aim.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 1, 2000... E-business might be risky, but doing nothing is riskier E-BUSINESS IS RISKY, but the biggest risk takers are the curmudgeons--electronics CEOs who are satisfied with the status quo, or who think they can take it slow and wait and see how...

INVENTORY im BALANCE.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 1, 2000... Can electronics makers and distributors work together to create a balanced, sustainable inventory management partnership? FIVE YEARS AGO, Adaptive Broadband Corp. executives knew manufacturing line downtime was a problem. They just didn't...

ALL EYES TURN TOWARD SOUTHEAST ASIA.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 1, 2000... Semiconductor equipment vendors must chart a new market course as pure-play foundries gain power and influence THE WINDS OF CHANGE are blowing across the Pacific Ocean for Applied Materials Inc. and the rest of the semiconductor capital...

NO STRINGS ATTACHED?(Company Business and Marketing)
July 1, 2000... The Bluetooth business opportunity is huge, but the payoff is years away. It will take some careful technology management to reach the promised land SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA is a land of movie stars, special effects and digitally enhanced...

EBoys and their noise.(Review)
July 1, 2000... 'Inside' account of VCs: Much talk, little to say EBOYS: THE FIRST INSIDE ACCOUNT OF VENTURE CAPITALISTS AT WORK Randall E. Stross Times Business/Random House May 15,2000 $25.95, 313 pages I jumped at the chance to...

E-business primer.(Review)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2000... Is anyone really in need of a bone-head e-business course? DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: THE ESSENTIALS OF E-BUSINESS LEADERSHIP Keyur Patel McGraw Hill Mary Pat McCarthy June 2000 $21.95, 127 pages John Chambers Cisco...

Do it yourself filtering.(Industry Trend or Event)(Editorial)
July 1, 2000... When the rock band Metallica and rapper Dr. Dre took legal action recently against a group of defendants that included the University of Southern California, Yale University and Indiana University among others, you might well ask what's going...