Electronic Business articles from March 2005

Electronic Business archives from March 2005

Choose your partner: learning to manage strategic partnerships is crucial.(Editor's Note)
March 1, 2005... The electronics business is an odd one. Most of the time, people in the industry focus on little things, such as deciding which tiny component to design into one of a hundred products. Perhaps that's a reflection of an industry that goes to...

No longer pending.(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... I wanted to address the incorrect listing of DRS Technologies & L-3 Communications as the second-largest electronics M&A deal for 2004 ("Gaining Leverage," January 2005, page 36). Although the table lists this deal as "pending," a deal was...

Station identification.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... The article "Digital Radio Taking Off" (January 2005, page 25) states that my client Clear Channel plans to add HD Radio to 95 percent of its stations by 2007. The company actually committed to converting 95 percent of its stations in the top...

Quoting a moving target.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2005... Two people from Solectron were quoted in "Shooting at a Moving Target" (December 2004, page 50). However, the quote "I don't know how OEMs are going to deal with this. How will they charge 20 percent for a product that is exactly the...

Other gender issues.(Letters)(Correction Notice)
March 1, 2005... In the feature "EDA Indigestion" (February 2005, page 52), we referred to Saloni Howard-Satin as being male and Actel's director of tools and flash marketing. She is actually female, and her title is Director of Tools and Antifuse Product...

Should real men shrink? The industry needs to balance the advantages of smaller geometries against the challenges involved.(Commentary)
March 1, 2005... Since the beginning of the semiconductor industry, process geometry has been the industry's trump card. No amount of engineering excellence or marketing savvy could compensate for a competitive disadvantage in line widths at the fab. Even a...

Getting ahead of green goals: stop pretending that environmental regulations are a surprise.(Commentary)
March 1, 2005... The global electronics industry has been slow--and too cautious--in responding to the EU's environmental regulations, WEEE and RoHS. Although some companies have embraced the inevitable and most companies (one hopes) are diligently...

The clone wars: a wave of no-name, low-cost consumer devices hits U.S. shores.(Global Competition)(X2)
March 1, 2005... The plethora of flat-screen TVs, digital cameras and MP3 players at the 2005 International Consumer Electronics Show in January was nothing new. Attendees have seen various versions of such devices at the show for years. What was new, however,...

Avoiding Bluetooth's missteps: ZigBee backers are focusing on low-cost, low-power wireless networks.(Networking)(ZigBee Alliance)
March 1, 2005... Supporters of the ZigBee wireless networking standard claim to have learned a few lessons from the missteps of another wireless rival, Bluetooth. "We looked critically at Bluetooth and learned a lot from that," says Bob Heile, chairman of the...

IPOs stage a comeback; pent-up demand fuels increase in 2004.(Finance)(initial public offerings)
March 1, 2005... Longtime market watchers summed it up this way: It's a good time to be an entrepreneur. During 2004, 231 companies filed for and completed their initial public offerings, according to investment bank America's Growth Capital. Although...

Fair exchange? Chinese currency revaluation increasingly likely.(Economic Outlook)
March 1, 2005... At an economic summit attended by representatives of 12 countries in early February, a key topic was the widening imbalances in trade and exchange rates. Behind closed doors, China heard repeated requests to raise the value of its currency, to...

Roller-coaster ride for Conexant: can the communications chip maker stage a comeback?(Management)(Conexant Systems Inc.)
March 1, 2005... When Conexant Systems spun off from Rockwell International's semiconductor business, in 1999, some corporate insiders questioned whether the fledgling enterprise could succeed as an independent company. But within six months, Conexant showed a...

Damn the trade-offs: consumers want their electronics small, light and cool. How do you deliver that and deal with power management issues?(Power Management)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... LIKE VOTERS WHO DEMAND more government services and simultaneously lower taxes, electronics consumers want better features and performance without having to sacrifice long battery life or endure excessive heat and weight. Never mind that...

More than the need for speed: processor makers come to realize that power matters too.(Power management: chips)
March 1, 2005... FOR MAINSTREAM microprocessor manufacturers, this decade is what the 1970s was for automakers: a time of reckoning with energy. For Detroit, an oil shortage drove consumers to choose fuel-efficient Japanese cars over American wheeled...

Balance of power: features and performance sell electronics, but only if battery life and heat are properly managed.(Power management: systems)
March 1, 2005... JERRY NEAL, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING at RF Micro Devices, is frequently on the road. Nowadays he talks business on a Nokia 6620 phone that in his rare idle moments can display live television on a 65,000-color screen. Or Neal can...

Optimism for optical: although losses continue, there are signs of recovery.(Semiconductors)
March 1, 2005... After three years of losses, layoffs, mergers and plant closings, the battered optical components industry is finally seeing the first signs of recovery. Unfortunately, however, most of the leading players aren't yet in shape to enjoy the...

Silicon on insulator's new momentum: the wafer technology that includes an insulation layer is gaining converts.(Substrates)
March 1, 2005... Once relegated to the relative I obscurity of space, aviation and other high-radiation environments, silicon-on-insulator (SoI) technology has made up a tiny portion of the total wafer market share to date--just 3 percent in 2004, according to...

Service station(ary): why is Cadence still providing design services?(Electronic Design Automation)
March 1, 2005... Nine years ago, Cadence positioned its entry into design services as a major growth strategy. Although EDA firms had always provided maintenance services, Cadence wanted to transform itself into a "design factory" for entire chip projects....

Tuning out RFID: despite the technology's potential, the electronics supply chain still shrugs.(Supply Chain Management)(radio frequency identification)
March 1, 2005... Although many high-tech companies are expecting the adoption of radio frequency identification (RFID) to be a boon, demand for the technology is not coming from the electronics supply chain anytime soon. None of four leading component...

Merger machinations: August Technology: in the winter of merger discontent.(Capital Equipment)
March 1, 2005... Webster's defines august as marked by majestic dignity and grandeur, but those are probably not the first words that come to mind when you think of a technology company whose 2004 revenues were only $67 million. That's particularly true in an...

Doomsday deflected: don't believe the Intel disaster scenarios--except one.(Profile)(Cover Story)
March 1, 2005... Bad news travels fast, especially when it's about one of the most important firms in high tech. Even a cursory Web search on Intel reveals a list of disasters as daunting as last year's series of Florida hurricanes. Public cancellation of...

Branded in China: TCL is leading the charge as Chinese companies push their own brand-name consumer electronics--complete with American chips.(Consumer Electronics)
March 1, 2005... THE NEWS THAT A CHINESE COMPANY named TCL was taking control of the venerable RCA brand of televisions in November 2003 caused barely a ripple in America's public consciousness, unlike the fuss that accompanied the sale of IBM's PC business to...

Reality bites: costs--not politics--prompt more-cautious offshoring.(Globalization)
March 1, 2005... When Teradyne decided to move production of its J750 semiconductor tester to Shanghai, China, it wasn't going in cold. It had opened an office there in 2003 to support customers in the Far East. The site initially housed applications...