Electronic Business articles from June 2002

Electronic Business archives from June 2002

The cultured corporation. (Editor's Note).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... "The HP Way," "Boundarylessness," "Think!"--each of these terms or phrases are rallying cries of well-established corporate cultures. They have been used by top managers to build continuity into their companies, helping to get corporate troops...

Why the PC is not a PVR. (The Chip Advisor).
June 1, 2002... If you have a ReplayTV or TiVo box, or even Microsoft Corp.'s UltimateTV system, you know how useful these devices are. No more scrambling for a blank videotape to record a show, or searching through a pile of unlabeled videotapes to find that...

Only spotty database protection available. (On the Law).
June 1, 2002... A large database--a significant asset of most companies--can often be copied with just the click of a mouse. What protection does the law offer against this? Copyright has been the traditional guardian of textual material. However, the...

Positive signs for output, employment, manufacturing and CEO confidence. (Analysis).
June 1, 2002... The nation is on the mend. Despite many poor earnings reports in the most recent earnings season for tech companies, economic data on output, employment, manufacturing and CEO confidence are all showing improvement. Meanwhile, this upbeat trend...

Liquidity trouble: exit strategies remain anemic for venture-backed start-ups. (Finance).
June 1, 2002... You've heard how hard it is to raise VC money. Now hear the other shoe drop: It is even harder to go public or sell a start-up to a corporate buyer. Since 2000, the number of information technology (IT) IPOs has gone steadily downhill,...

401(k) care: businesses urge caution on retirement policy changes. (Finance).
June 1, 2002... Cypress Semiconductor Corp. CEO T.J. Rodgers was so irked that he and his employees could not make 401(k) investments into company stock that he fired his plan administrator and got a new program. Under proposed legislation, however, such...

Limping along. (Business Barometer).
June 1, 2002... This month's polling of purchasing professionals shows that many expect the economy to stay the course for the next 30 days. Hearing the grim news last month of the country's employment situation (unemployment rose to an eight-year high of 6%),...

Thin TV, big potential: flat-screen LCD TVs have attracted a small but growing following, as prices continue to fall. (Business Trends).
June 1, 2002... Frank DeMartin, marketing director for the U.S. consumer electronics subsidiary of Osaka, Japan-based Sharp Corp., was skeptical in 2000 when his company launched a line of pricey TV sets using liquid crystal display (LCD) flat panels instead...

Time to collect: will distribution customers ante up for services? (Business Trends).
June 1, 2002... You might say they're as mad as hell and they aren't going to take it any more. Or you might just say the distribution industry is "evolving." Either way, three leading distributors are stepping up to the plate and asking customers to pay...

Digital radio will hit the ground running: IBOC technology transforms traditional radio to digital. (Business Trends).
June 1, 2002... Until now, mention digital radio and people thought satellite. But thanks to a technology called in-band, on-channel (IBOC), terrestrial digital radio may soon be a reality. IBOC is a method of using broadcasters' existing spectrum to...

Not ready for prime time: most TV stations miss DTV transition deadline. (Business Trends).
June 1, 2002... By May 1, 2002, all TV stations in the United States were supposed to be on the air with high-definition digital signals, according to the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Instead, more than two-thirds of the some 1,200 total stations had sent...

Cut 'em some slack: a 40-hour work week could be a strategic move, expert argues. (Business Trends: Management).
June 1, 2002... The next time one of your managers gets enough courage to tell you to cut him some slack, Tom DeMarco urges you to take it literally. DeMarco, a management consultant and author, also urges that you not wait for that manager to surface...

Performance [optional]: excessive use of stock options means executives profit even as their companies suffer. (Executive Pay).
June 1, 2002... In the fiscal year ended June 30, 2001, the stock price of JDS Uniphase Corp., San Jose, CA, plunged about 90%. Its losses grew more than 60 fold and its negative earnings per share (EPS) grew more than 40 fold, according to its proxy statement...

Design duopoly. (EDA Update).
June 1, 2002... On the day last December that it announced it would buy Avant! Corp., Synopsys Inc. Chairman and CEO Aart de Geus began spreading the word internally about Synopsys III, a phrase he coined for the EDA software company's next stage of life. ...

Oops, I did it again,' and again and again. (Digital Video Recorders).
June 1, 2002... Don't call them couch potatoes. During the last SuperBowl, users with TiVo digital video recorders (DVRs) weren't sitting still, or at least their hands weren't still. On average, they paused or replayed parts of the Super Bowl broadcast 44...

IPO surprise: profitable is best performing initial public offering. (Profile).
June 1, 2002... DURING HIS IPO ROAD SHOW in February 2001, Moshe Gavrielov might have had better luck selling oranges like his father once did. "It was a terrible market," recalls the Israeli-born CEO of Verisity Ltd., which has corporate offices in Israel and...

Hold on to your handsets: a tumultuous shift to new business models and broadband 3G technology is bringing opportunity, and risk, to players in the wireless handset industry. (Communications).
June 1, 2002... IT'S HARD TO IMAGINE a tougher competitor than Helsinki, Finland-based Nokia Corp. The $27-billion powerhouse shipped 36% of the world's 380 million cell-phone handsets last year, more than twice as many as its nearest competitor. But ask...

Informed hiring decisions improve retention--and productivity. (Commentary).
June 1, 2002... Every electronics business, in one way or another, battles the "80/20" rule: Whether in production, administration or sales, 80% of the success generated within an organization stems from the combined efforts of 20% of the workforce. Most...

Building more competitive displays: better chips + better chip production = better displays. (Special Advertising Section).
June 1, 2002... While declining prices for thin-film transistor (TFT) displays have expanded the market for flat panels on desktops, in automobiles and, of course, on laptop computers, heightened consumer expectations for color, higher resolutions and less...