Electronic Business articles from July 2005

Electronic Business archives from July 2005

Doomed to repeat the past? The electronics industry needs to embrace consumer concerns about privacy.(Editorial)
July 1, 2005... Most companies spend the bulk of their time and energy trying to produce more revenue and improve their competitive position. Actions that support this agenda receive a lot of attention, just as developments that threaten profitability are...

It's how big?(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2005... The article "A World of Opportunities and Challenges" (April 2005, page 23) states that according to Paul Saffo, director of Institute for the Future, the downloadable ring tone business for cell phones is now 10 times the size of the global...

Missed it by that much.(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2005... Congratulations on an excellent May 2005 issue. I love it when the semiconductor companies get attention. As an old Analog Devices guy (now a consultant), I still like to compare companies, but I see no mention of Linear Technology, a...

The impact of innovation: low-cost silicon customization will change the way products are designed--and marketed.
July 1, 2005... With the dust now settled on the industry's nuclear winter, its easier to see what s approaching. We are now entering a new era of mass customization spurred on by emerging semiconductor products going under a variety of rubrics such as...

Take 3: after several false starts, cellular carriers are finally rolling out 3G services.(third-generation cellular phone and data services)
July 1, 2005... Larry Lang, general manager of Cisco Systems' mobile wireless group, feels cautiously optimistic about the U.S. third-generation (3G) cellular phone and data services market. That's because, like other network and telecom equipment makers,...

No, you can't take it with you: keeping your IP from walking out the door with ex-employees.(intellectual property)
July 1, 2005... EDA firms Magma Design Automation and Synopsys have been arguing over patents since July 2004 and have been in active litigation since September of that year. But in April 2005, details of the dispute became public. The case is one of the...

M&A: so far, so blah: activity is inching up slightly in tech sector.(mergers and acquisitions)
July 1, 2005... If you are shopping around for an acquisition, in electronics or in the general business arena, it's a buyer's market. If you are looking for a buyer, get ready to put your best foot forward. Merger-and-acquisition activity in the U.S. is...

Tech companies opt for settlements: as patent lawsuits increase, companies pick their battles carefully.
July 1, 2005... Technology companies have been paying large sums lately to settle a string of high-profile patent and intellectual property lawsuits, rather than take the cases to trial (see the "Recent Settlements" box). And legal experts say the industry's...

Back on track--sort of: at midyear, U.S. electronics sales rebound slightly.
July 1, 2005... The U.S. economy at midyear 2005--and concomitant demand for electronics products--is on track with last fall's consensus forecast by economic prognosticators. They forecast that economic growth would slow to about a 4 percent pace by now and...

Transmeta's chip business runs out of gas: upstart quits the x86 market and tries to salvage IP licensing.(internet protocols)(Company Profile)
July 1, 2005... Transmeta did more than any other electronics company to extend battery life for mobile computing, but in the end, it simply ran out of juice. It invented technology that adds hours of life to standard notebook computer batteries by reducing...

Core wars: dual-core brings better performance, but at what price?
July 1, 2005... When Intel and AMD began development of dual-core technologies for their x86 processor platforms, their goal was the same as it had always been: to improve processor performance. And as that goal became more and more difficult to attain by...

Surround-sound revolution? A new innovation, without the wires, may generate significant chip sales.
July 1, 2005... The trouble with most surround-sound audio systems is the hassle of installing multiple speakers and connecting all their wires around a designated listening area. Now 1 Limited, a private U.K. company, claims to have solved that problem. And...

Real engineers don't need hype: EDA is the last bastion of fluff-free software engineering.(electronic design automation)
July 1, 2005... I have a confession: I hate the software industry. PR flacks hyping trivial product features, CEOs bragging about private jets, pundits touting markets that grow from zero millions to zero billions in five years--the whole software scene is...

Who's been using my stuff? Suppliers turn to software to track components from design through production.
July 1, 2005... It's a lesson the supply chain knows well: At some point, those big volumes of components flowing through the supply chain started out as a single part designed into a single prototype by a single engineer in a cubicle. If you are the component...

Tech sells, but who's buying? Tool vendors are facing this gnarly question this year.
July 1, 2005... The much vaunted second half of 2005 is here, and it does indeed seem that the chip industry is enjoying a modest recovery. But that modesty translates into a tough market for the capital equipment sector. Some analysts have raised their...

Is China the next R&D superpower? Reforms and steadily growing funding have Chinese scientists producing research breakthroughs, but challenges remain.(research and development)
July 1, 2005... IN 1995 PHYSICIST EN-GE WANG made a fateful career decision. He had a Ph.D. from Beijing University and five years of experience as a postdoctoral fellow and researcher at one of France's national laboratories and at the University of Houston....

Nano-imprint makes its mark: this novel manufacturing method, although still early in its development, may revolutionize chip making and other industries.
July 1, 2005... Although most of the semiconductor industry is still learning to build chips with circuits as narrow as 90 nanometers, Hewlett-Packard researcher Stan Williams is using a novel process called nano-imprint lithography (NIL) to make experimental...