Electronic Business articles from May 2002

Electronic Business archives from May 2002

Auditing your audit and accounting practices. (Editor's Note).(the Arthur Andersen indictment)(Column)
May 1, 2002... Instead of just walking away from Arthur Andersen LLP--it's like shunning the kid who got caught for some school prank you may have participated in--companies that use its audit services should be reflecting on their auditing and accounting...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2002... ABANDONED FLASH PARTS An interesting article ["Flash: A fractured fairy tale," March 2002, page 63], but one thing you might have mentioned was the discouraging trend for flash pioneers Intel and AMD to abandon their legacy parts. Neither...

Coming attractions. (The Chip Advisor).(information technology)(Column)
May 1, 2002... In the semiconductor industry, predicting the future is easy. This whole business is built on self-fulfilling prophecies. The most famous of these is Moore's Law. Sometimes regarded as a prediction, it originally was just an observation, and...

Analog is dead; long live analog. (Commentary).(Column)
May 1, 2002... Once upon a time, all electronics were analog. Over the past decade or so, though, the proportion of analog in an integrated-circuit design has been shrinking, until it now represents only about 20% to 25% of the design. The growth of...

Big companies can innovate through acquisition. (Commentary).(Column)
May 1, 2002... The prevailing wisdom in the electronics industry always has been that big companies can't innovate. Industry giants, revered for their marketing and channel management, lose sight of the fact that the lifeblood of the electronics industry is...

'Subdued' recovery will pick up steam in 2003. (Analysis).(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2002... With the steady accumulation of evidence that the worst is likely behind us, attention has turned to trying to gauge the strength of the presumptive economic recovery. Growth estimates of economists and market analysts reflect a wide divergence...

Funding grind: Tough road, but not impossible, for entrepreneurs seeking later financing. (Finance).(electronics entrepreneurs)(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2002... There's good news and bad news for electronics entrepreneurs seeking later stage VC financing. First the bad news: It got harder to secure later round financing in 2001, with no indication yet that things are turning around. The good news:...

Not an option: High tech fights rule change on stock options. (Finance).(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2002... No David vs. Goliath battle here. The factions facing off over S.1940, the Levin stock options bill, are giants all the way. The bill, introduced in February by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), would require companies to report the cost of stock...

Steady, and hopefully, stable. (Business Barometer).(poll of purchasing managers)(Statistical Data Included)
May 1, 2002... This month's poll of purchasing managers shows little change from last month. The majority of respondents believe that overall business conditions and capacity utilization will remain the same for the next 60 days. Many were hoping for a...

Boxed out: How Intel lost its place in the Xbox. (Business Trends).
May 1, 2002... Rick Thompson didn't realize he had a shadow in the fall of 1999. The Microsoft Corp. vice president was scouting in Japan for someone to manufacture the Xbox video game console. Memo But at the same time, a small crew of Intel Corp....

Welcome to our nightmare: After a five-year ordeal, ISSI sees anti-dumping ruling overturned. (Business Trends).(Integrated Silicon Solution Inc)
May 1, 2002... It took five years of legal wrangling, nearly $1 million in attorneys fees, more than $1 million in duties paid and thousands of staff hours in aggravation, but Integrated Silicon Solution Inc. (ISSI), a Santa Clara, CA-based fabless memory...

Ultra wideband comes out of the shadows: FCC ruling sets new precedent on spectrum use. (Business Trends).
May 1, 2002... An obscure military technology used for years in espionage may be coming to a wireless network near you. A February ruling by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) gave the go-ahead for the development of commercial products using...

Watch out Sony: Apex, already No. 1 in U.S. DVD players, is taking aim at TVs. (Business Trends).
May 1, 2002... America's best-selling DVD players no longer come from Tokyo-based Sony Corp., but from a little-known Ontario, CA-based company whose founders started out in the scrap-metal business. Apex Digital Inc., a three-year-old private company...

Color my world: Cell phone displays move from monochrome to color. (Business Trends).
May 1, 2002... Chances are, you and your cell phone have been living in a monochrome world. But that's set to change. Color liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) finally have reached the production levels and price points that make them viable for use in cell...

Corporate America: Know thy investor; Institutional investors matter more than you think, says study. (Business Trends: Management).
May 1, 2002... HP investors: Raise your hand if you haven't met with Carly Fiorina in the last six months. Anybody? As the whirlwind tour of Hewlett-Packard Co.'s energetic CEO recently highlighted, institutional investors can be the key to a company's...

Voices of experience. (Management).
May 1, 2002... Five of high tech's most seasoned entrepreneurs, executives and investors discuss the current industry downturn and their hopes, frustrations and fears THROUGHOUT HISTORY, people have turned to their elders for wisdom and advice during...

Fixing leaky fabs: Whether it's to buff its image or save on costs, chipmakers are finding ways to use less water. (Environment).
May 1, 2002... It's not easy being green. And it's not cheap, either. Just ask Tom Cooper, environmental engineer for Intel Corp., who had to figure out how to double chip production in Rio Rancho, NM, without using an ounce more water. He did it by...

Growing pains: Despite recent bumps in the road, Nvidia is a model for how a private start-up can make the transition to a public company. (Profile).
May 1, 2002... CHOOSE A CRITERION: Revenue, profits, market share, stock performance, cost controls, perpetuating culture. By any one of them, Nvidia Corp. has made a smooth transition from start-up to publicly held company, avoiding landmines that hobble...

Back to the future: Eye-popping products are on the horizon, as new semiconductor materials prepare to mix it up with silicon. (Top Semiconductor Companies).
May 1, 2002... Electronic paper. Sure. Flexible computer screens. Sounds good. Internet-enabled cereal boxes. Say what? These are just a few of the devices that could hit the market in years--rather than decades--as some of the world's largest chip companies...

Bluetooth lives! In a reversal of form, top chipmakers and OEMs are shipping products featuring the much-hyped, often-maligned short-range wireless technology. (Specialty Processors).
May 1, 2002... ONCE A QUARTER for the past few years, hundreds of developers working with the emerging Bluetooth wireless standard have convened for an "unplugfest," an event at which they test how early iterations of their products will work together....

Beyond processors. (Venture Pulse).
May 1, 2002... Continuous advances in microprocessor performance and high-speed broadband access will mean big opportunities for entrepreneurs within a few years-- though the picture seems confusing today. Start-ups that can make sense of the post-boom...

Abandoning ship. (Business Trends).(Cadence Design Systems Inc. dropping Arthur Andersen L.L.P.)
May 1, 2002... Top-tier EDA player Cadence Design Systems Inc., San Jose, CA, didn't mince any words when it announced it was dropping Arthur Andersen LLP as its auditor. "We became concerned with their ability to serve a global company such as ours," said...