Electronic Business articles from May 2001

Electronic Business archives from May 2001

Silicon Valley's magic.
May 1, 2001... "Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore." This famous line from "The Wizard of Oz" jumps to mind when I start ruminating on Silicon Valley and its Oz-like reputation. This month, in our cover story, "Silicon Valley's crushing costs," page 56,...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2001... H1B STORIES STRIKE A CHORD I just checked out your cover story on H1B visas ["Living in limbo," March 2001, page 54], and wanted to thank you for the detailed and in-depth coverage. On behalf of ISN [the Immigrants Support Network, Budd...

Where will all the RDRAMs go?(Industry Trend or Event)
May 1, 2001... DRAM prices have fallen further, faster, than Nasdaq stocks. The Nasdaq index is down about 60% from its high a year ago, but DRAMs now sell for about one-fourth what they brought last summer. Commodity memories--the standard PC100 and PC133...

'One-click shopping' still risky to implement.(Amazon.com's lawsuit)(Company Business and Marketing)
May 1, 2001... I always get nervous when my spouse and 11-year-old go shopping. My daughter says: "Mommy, can I have that?" And, like magic, it appears--along with a bill. That's the idea behind Amazon.com Inc.'s controversial patent. Statistics show...

Who will be the first 'Cisco' of the SoC business?(Industry Trend or Event)
May 1, 2001... John Chambers of Cisco Systems Inc. has proclaimed, "The fast will devour the big" in the communications revolution. The semiconductor industry appears to have proclaimed, "the fast will devour to grow big." Just look at Broadcom Corp.'s speed...

Chin up--this still could be a soft landing.(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2001... So much for the conceit that we've entered a Nirvanaish world where trees grow to the sky, every child (and wage earner) is above average and fundamental economic laws have been repealed. Yes, the "New Economy" does change many...

The dos and don'ts of fund raising.(Industry Trend or Event)
May 1, 2001... Simple mistakes reduce chances of nailing a venture investment It isn't David Letterman's Top 10 list, and entrepreneurs probably won't find it funny. With venture funding harder to come by these days, entrepreneurs have to be twice as...

Last firm standing.(venture capital firms)(Industry Trend or Event)(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2001... Market watchers predict VC shakeout Everybody knows what happened to many of the dot-coms and other start-ups funded by venture capital two or three years ago. They're gone, restructured, reorganized, repositioned, or languishing in IPO...

At best, a cautious optimism.(Industry Trend or Event)(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2001... It's a tricky time to be reading the inventory tea leaves. This month's survey of purchasing managers shows that a third are looking for some improvement in business conditions over the next 30 days. But many believe it's wishful thinking that...

Trading suspended?(open versus private business-to-business exchanges)(Company Business and Marketing)
May 1, 2001... Why open market exchanges haven't taken off as expected Talk about a reversal of fortune... Open market component exchanges--once believed to be the death knell for traditional component resellers--haven't lived up to their billing. In...

Now hear this.(Industry Trend or Event)
May 1, 2001... Faster than the speed of sound, consumer audio chips have grabbed the majority of the global audio-chip market and will continue to gnaw away at PC audio chips' market share. "In contrast to the eroding PC audio-chip market, the consumer...

Staking a claim.(venture capital in Silicon Valley)(Industry Trend or Event)
May 1, 2001... Plenty of capital still awaits the right ventures Nothing illustrates Silicon Valley's resiliency better than its ability to keep financing startup companies even when the bears run amok in the public markets. Despite the recent battering...

Party on, dude.(Industry Trend or Event)(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2001... Legal roadblocks no match for digital music players It's been said that rock n' roll will never die, and that's one of the reasons analysts believe the same thing about MP3 players. Whatever the outcome of legal battles involving MP3...

Comeback predicted for Internet appliances.(Industry Trend or Event)
May 1, 2001... Devices should be marketed as a PC complement The original premise of marketing Internet appliances (IA), says one market researcher, was about as sound as marketing freezers in the Antarctic. That may explain why some of the sector's most...

Will businesses be regulated on privacy?(Industry Trend or Event)
May 1, 2001... Market researcher sees cause for concern Businesses and consumers appear to be widely divided over whether the government should regulate Internet privacy policies. Although the Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau...

Securing the franchise.(cellular baseband chip market)(Industry Trend or Event)
May 1, 2001... TI aims to keep its lock on the wireless world O MAP, an acronym coined two years ago by Dallas-based Texas Instruments Inc. (TI), stands for Open Multimedia Applications Platform. But it may as well stand for TI's "ownership map" for...

'Brother, can you spare me a part?'.(PartMiner)(Company Business and Marketing)
May 1, 2001... Recent deals could help make component brokers fashionable There's always been a solution out there for companies facing an inventory imbalance, but most electronics manufacturers don't want to talk about it. Any large electronics...

Juggling act.(Keithley Instruments)(Company Operations)
May 1, 2001... Keithley manages MRP changeover without missing a beat Here's a tough management-juggling act: Keithley Instruments Inc., which makes test-and-measurement devices, overhauled its business processes, installed a new manufacturing planning...

COSTS.(Industry Trend or Event)(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2001... Steve Carlson, then CEO of Tharas Systems Inc., Santa Clara, CA, stood gaping at the empty "office space:" 6,000 square feet of concrete floors, broken doors, water-stained ceilings, pealing paint and grease spots. Another entrepreneur might...

MOMENT of TRUTH.(network processors)(Industry Trend or Event)(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2001... Network processors are finally arriving, but will they prove worth the wait? Like a teenager left to cool his jets by a date who's running late, the communications and chip industries have been waiting for network processors. So far, last...

KEEP YOUR KEY PEOPLE.(Industry Trend or Event)
May 1, 2001... Lessons in the care and feeding of the engineering staff All the top semiconductor companies have one thing in common: top engineers. Great engineers can enhance every phase of the business process--from design through testing,...

THE Greening OF TECHNOLOGY.(Company Business and Marketing)(Industry Trend or Event)
May 1, 2001... Electronics Companies--at least the progressive and pragmatic ones--are taking steps to make their products more environmentally friendly WHENEVER THE PRODUCT DESIGNERS at Hewlett-Packard Co.'s laser printer business in Boise, ID, set out...

Marriage MADE IN Sugar Land.(Company Business and Marketing)
May 1, 2001... Kent Electronics became a digestible item for Avnet, once it stopped acting like 'a mini-conglomerate' WHAT A DIFFERENCE A YEAR MAKES. In May 2000, Kent Electronics Corp. was doing its best to incorporate four different...

Advice for nurturing business relationships.(Review)
May 1, 2001... They should be much more than 'contacts' or 'associates' IT'S NOT BUSINESS, IT'S PERSONAL By Ronna Lichtenberg Hyperion January 2001 Price: $23.95, 228 pages We all know the feeling--that nagging guilt about not...

Lessons for the 'new economy'.(Industry Trend or Event)
May 1, 2001... It is probably too soon to learn any profound lessons from the latest rollover of the economic cycle. But everybody can draw at least one conclusion from the current round of plant closings and layoffs: Despite access to tons of marketing and...