Electronic Business articles from July 2003

Electronic Business archives from July 2003

The China challenge. (Editor's Note).(Editorial)
July 1, 2003... This issue's special report points out the opportunities and obstacles of doing business in mainland China CHINA IS A TOPIC THAT ISN'T far from most people's minds in the semiconductor industry these days. It's no wonder. A rapidly...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2003... GREED IS NOT GOOD To me, "Trickle down trouble in the venture world" [May 15, 2003, p. 42] is more of a story about greed (or, at best, poor judgment) than about building long-term businesses and investment. We saw valuations for companies...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
July 1, 2003... On page 25 of the aforementioned story, the column headings in the table entitled "Leaders in consumer ICs," were swapped. We regret the error.

Toward a more trustworthy PC: a new plan for secure desktops. (Chip Advisor).
July 1, 2003... Do you trust your PC? You shouldn't. Your PC is unreliable. It can reveal your private information to others in the normal course of operation, and if it gets a computer virus, almost anything can happen, from data corruption to hard disk...

Selling at the docks of eBay: electronics firms float dead inventory and find millions of dollars. (Business Trends).
July 1, 2003... Spend just a few minutes looking at eBay, and you realize you can buy or sell just about anything there. Then it becomes clear that it's not just consumer goods--it's business equipment too. And although electronics companies are hesitant about...

In bed with embedded Linux: Tiny MontaVista offers an alternative to proprietary operating systems. (Profile).
July 1, 2003... The customer list of MontaVista Software Inc., a commercial distributor of Linux for embedded devices, reads like a Who's Who of the electronics industry, including IBM, Intel, Texas Instruments and Sony. How did this tiny, four-year-old...

Fully charged: new power-management ICs for converting up to 100 volts enable power-supply makers to satisfy demanding industrial and consumer markets. (Special Advertising Section).
July 1, 2003... The multidimensional squeeze for telecommunications equipment suppliers won't be ending anytime soon. A weak economy and global overcapacity have squeezed telecom equipment makers and their suppliers to cut costs. The $4.4-billion telecom...

Patent applications pile up: the slowdown at the U.S. patent office is a big problem, especially for start-ups. (Management).
July 1, 2003... Steve Morris, CEO of Tcscda Corp.-- a two-year-old start-up developing an integrated circuit tester--plans to raise a third round of funding later this year. By the time he starts pitching investors, he hopes the Portland, OR-based company will...

Making quarterly earnings coherent: new regulation nudges companies toward clearer disclosure. (Finance).
July 1, 2003... Hard to believe, but not all acronyms are bad. Take GAAP. It stands for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, and companies are issuing an increasing number of press releases touting their earnings as defined by GAAP. Because using GAAP is...

A second chance for X-ray lithography? J-Mar Technologies is trying to revive a process most of the chip industry long ago abandoned. (Technology).
July 1, 2003... The semiconductor industry spent most of the 1990s developing technology for etching circuits onto silicon wafers by using X rays, whose extremely short wavelengths allow the construction of circuits smaller than those made with conventional...

Broadband penetration in U.S. continues. (Telecommunications).(AeA survey)(Brief Article)(Industry Overview)
July 1, 2003... The number of broadband users in the United States grew from 2.8 million in December 1999 to 16.2 million, 15% of households, in June 2002, according to a study released in May by the AeA. The report, "Broadband in the States 2003,"...

Send in the relief. (Business Barometer).(Industry Overview)
July 1, 2003... This month's polling of purchasing managers reveals the most positive outlook yet for the electronics industry. Many believe that some relief is coming for the semiconductor market in the third and fourth quarters. While consumer spending is...

Network processor survivors: new applications bode well for chip suppliers that can hang on. (Semiconductors).(Industry Overview)
July 1, 2003... To entrepreneurs, the emerging network processor (NPU) market seemed nearly irresistible a few years ago. During 2000 alone, three NPU start-ups were sold for between $415 million and $750 million and a more established vendor was acquired for...

Differing opinions on custom chips: Intel and IBM disagree on whether it's good business. (Electronic Design Automation).
July 1, 2003... When electronics firms build new products, they must decide whether to use standard or custom ASICs. If they go the custom route, they must also decide whether to do the design in-house or outsource it to another firm. For years, many EDA firms...

Should chip design resemble software design? (Strategies).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2003... CHIP DESIGNERS NEED to be according to Mike Con-cannon, vice president of foundry services for IBM Microelectronics, Armonk, NY. "Good designs are like bingo cards," he explains. "You want to get to the end result as quickly as possible." To do...

EDA firms unworried about software piracy. (Intellectual Property).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2003... SOFTWARE BOOTLEGGING is a big problem for software firms, but EDA vendors are less worried than their peers in other segments of the software industry. The market for pirated software in the United States alone causes an estimated loss of...

Tools to stay on top of component obsolescence: going, going, going...gone! (Supply Chain Management).
July 1, 2003... Years ago, procurement specialists and engineers at OEMs and contract manufacturers had few choices upon discovering that a critical part was no longer on the market: swallow the cost and hassle of a redesign or find a reputable broker and pay...

Supply chain security concerns. (Logistics).
July 1, 2003... IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY added C-TPAT to your list of "need-toknow" supply chain acronyms, do so now. Manufacturers and logistics providers say deciphering this voluntary security pact for customers may become a strategic differentiator in the...

Analyze this! (Finance).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2003... IT LOOKS LIKE DEPRESSING business conditions are sending everybody into analysis. Just scant months ago, the National Electronic Distributors Association, Alpharetta, GA, unveiled a set of calculations OEMs and suppliers can use to...

The mainland mirage: electronics firms face four major challenges in making their mainland China dreams come true. (Special Report: China).(Industry Overview)
July 1, 2003... FOR THE PAST DECADE, electronics firms have been establishing manufacturing facilities in China, hoping to take advantage of low-cost labor and capture a share of China's growing market for electronics products. The personnel costs are...

The Chinese chip challenge: the Communist giant's ambitions to rapidly ramp up its IC industry present both opportunities and uncertainties. (Special Report: China).(Industry Overview)
July 1, 2003... LITTLE MORE THAN TWO YEARS AGO, KLA-Tencor Corp. employed a total of three people in China; they kept the San Jose, CA, company's process-control equipment up and running in several small semiconductor fabs. Since then, the company's China...

Riding the big wireless wave: can anything stop the endless summer of profits from Qualcomm's cell phone innovation? (Profile).
July 1, 2003... WHEN DR. IRWIN MARK JACOBS left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1966 to join the engineering faculty at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), he worried about getting any work done with all the beaches nearby....