Electronic Business articles from March 2003

Electronic Business archives from March 2003

Coming in on the upswing. (Editor's Note).(Editorial)
March 1, 2003... Spring has always been associated with rebirth, and this year, the resurrection of the electronics industry can't come too soon. After many quarters of false starts and false optimism, it finally looks as though recovery may be imminent. ...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2003... FABLESS OUTSIDE THE U.S. Regarding your story on the increase in fabless chip companies outside the U.S. ["Fabless goes global," February 2003, page 54], it is refreshing to read a well-researched piece with a global perspective. ...

Clarification.(Correction Notice)
March 1, 2003... In the story on fabless chip companies ["Fabless goes global," February 2003, page 54], PMC-Sierra was incorrectly listed as a Canadian company, based in Burnaby, BC. It is actually based in Santa Clara, CA, and is incorporated in the U.S....

How wireless can we get? (The Chip Advisor).
March 1, 2003... As I look around my home and office, I see wires everywhere. It's like the early days of electrification in the United States, when streets and buildings were festooned with power, telephone and telegraph cables. Today, the telegraph has been...

Valuing tech companies. (Commentary).(Column)
March 1, 2003... Private companies have lost access to public equity markets. Investors are no longer rising to the lure of big sales just around the corner. Clearly the 'new' metrics for valuing tech companies that were established in the bubble years are out....

Mixed signals for the U.S. economy. (Analysis).
March 1, 2003... Economic indicators were not as positive as we would liked to have seen over the closing months of 2002. But they weren't a washout either. They certainly weren't as bad as they could have been given the "doom and gloom" that seemed to descend...

A bad case of IPO-sclerosis: initial public offerings decline--again. (Finance).(Industry Overview)
March 1, 2003... Only someone who just awoke from a two-year coma would be surprised that the pipeline for initial public offerings (IPOs) atrophied in 2002. How bad was it? Nineteen venture-backed companies went public in 2002, raising a total of $1.6...

Dividend dilemma: will more technology companies start paying dividends? (Finance).
March 1, 2003... While Microsoft Corp. garnered headlines in January for announcing it was finally going to start paying a dividend, some smaller technology companies had already taken the plunge. Two semiconductor companies, Maxim Integrated Products Inc.,...

War clouds bring 'wait and see' attitude. (Business Barometer).
March 1, 2003... This month's polling of purchasing managers shows businesses cautious and conservative as they wait to see what happens in the Middle East. Businesses that were hoping for a recovery by now are taking a "wait and see" attitude. In addition to...

Zilog: turnaround in progress; how Chapter 11 revived the chipmaker. (Business Trends).
March 1, 2003... A carefully orchestrated bankruptcy filing a year ago breathed new life into Zilog Inc., which pioneered the 8-bit microcontroller three decades ago but never capitalized on its early promise. Zilog, San Jose, CA, was only in bankruptcy for...

Intel retains top spot. (Business Trends).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... Intel Corp. is still top dog on IC Insights Inc.'s annual list of worldwide semiconductor sales leaders. The Santa Clara, CA-based chip maker's 2002 sales of $24 billion were nearly triple those of its nearest competitor--South Korea's Samsung...

Wireless rivals emerge: low-cost wireless alternatives are aiming for uses in industrial automation, gaming and PC peripherals. (Business Trends).
March 1, 2003... The long-awaited Bluetooth era is finally dawning, giving consumers an easy way to wirelessly connect their PCs, phones, personal organizers and other tools. An estimated 35 million Bluetooth chips were shipped in 2002, mainly for use in...

Home offices are becoming a big market. (Business Trends).(Industry Overview)
March 1, 2003... As corporate America works to improve its own bottom line, it's fueling growth in the PC and telecommunications markets. More and more corporations are sending people home to work, according to a recent report by Business Communications...

Holding on to your human assets: companies get creative to retain employees after M&A. (Business Trends: Management).
March 1, 2003... Retaining key talent is always an issue in a merger or acquisition. It has become even more difficult for anyone buying or selling a struggling technology start-up in the current economic environment. Why? Because it's become increasingly...

It's e-business. And it's turning electronics companies into models of efficiency.
March 1, 2003... Everywhere in the electronics industry today, collaborative e-business is simplifying operations, improving quality control and cutting costs. It's transformation time for the value chain. How are you going to play to win? Your product is...

How to capitalize on the downturn: smart companies are taking measures now so they can bloom with future growth. (Management).(Borland Software, Wind River Systems, Microchip Technology, Cadence Design Systems, ATMI)
March 1, 2003... During this, the longest downturn in their history, electronics companies might feel like they've survived a slew of biblical plagues. First came the drought. Next came the windstorms. Then, the floods. Even now, a toxic, malodorous cloud still...

In search of ASIC alternatives: chip companies counter spiraling costs with FPGA-ASIC hybrids. (Special Report: ASICs).
March 1, 2003... AMULET TECHNOLOGIES LLC in Santa Clara had a problem. The fabless chip company had designed a graphics engine for an embedded system. It wasn't a high-volume application, but the company still expected to ship as many as 100,000 of the chips....

When slower is better: slowing capacity, consolidation and better corporate behavior rejuvenate the once cutthroat disk drive industry. (Storage).(Industry Overview)
March 1, 2003... DISK DRIVE industry veteran Arif Shakeel was amazed this past holiday season to find that, for the second consecutive year, the industry's leading sales category was drives with 40 gigabytes per disk platter. "I've been in the business...

Hedging your bets: global electronics players wise-up to the risks of world currency markets. (Finance).
March 1, 2003... Back in the spring of 1999, Ken Plotkin held an aversion to currency hedging, the practice of protecting one's multinational firm from currency swings. "I felt investors didn't invest in our firm for profit or loss from hedging," recalls...

Technology's best and brightest could speed recovery. (Venture Pulse).
March 1, 2003... Economic factors alone cannot account for the depth of the high-tech slump. The latest numbers baffle venture capital veterans. In 2001, venture capitalists funded more than 1,500 seed and early-stage deals, and figures suggest that they funded...