Electronic Business articles from November 2003

Electronic Business archives from November 2003

When worlds collide: the nimble runner meets the rumbling linebacker.(Editor's Note)
November 1, 2003... Startup companies are wide receivers. They need speed and agility to avoid the obstacles posed by linebackers committed to halting their progress. Unless the obstacle is as big as the U.S. government. Then speed and agility just get...

Hard times with hardware.(Letters)
November 1, 2003... One senses from reading your article "Microsoft does hardware" (October 2003, page 44) that you do not know that Microsoft also sold speakers and cordless telephones at one time. The speakers, also known as the Digital Sound System 80, sold for...

Dealing with obsolescence.(Letters)
November 1, 2003... Polly Schneider Traylor's article "Tools to stay on top of component obsolescence" (July 1, 2003, page 37) does an excellent job of outlining what commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) manufacturers are faced with in keeping products current as the...

Off the charts.(Letters)
November 1, 2003... I liked Tam Harbert's recent article "Outsourcing complicates Sarbanes-Oxley compliance" (August 2003, page 16), but I think you missed a good opportunity to speak to Section 401 (a)(j), which relates to off-balance sheet liability. Mike...

Clarification.(Letters)
November 1, 2003... In the August 2003 story "Independent resellers band together," page 34, the sentence "But many independents don't physically handle the components and resell them in factory-sealed boxes, have stringent quality-control procedures and take...

How much integration is too much? Smaller is better--in moderation.(Chip Advisor)
November 1, 2003... Integration is a critical element of the semiconductor industry and often the ultimate value of our work. We call them "integrated circuits," after all. Increased integration fosters entire new product categories, especially today's crossover...

Bringing in distributors: it's never too early to include distributors in design decisions.(Commentary)
November 1, 2003... The ways electronics firms collaborate are undergoing a significant shift. Traditionally, manufacturers have supported product innovation through the rapid introduction of new technologies. However, today's market is characterized by steady...

IPO market shows signs of life.(Management)
November 1, 2003... A few technology companies dipped their toes into the IPO pond over the summer and found that the water was just fine. FormFactor, a maker of wafer probe cards for semiconductor manufacturing, went public in June. Form-Factor was the first...

Flashing their cash: chip companies with lots of the green stuff buy back stock, retire debt and even pay dividends.(Finance)
November 1, 2003... In most industries, if a company accumulates a billion dollars or more in cash that's earning a paltry 1 percent to 2 percent in the bank, a shareholder might wonder why management is underusing its assets. Not so in the semiconductor industry....

What's different this time? Computer products, capital equipment and U.S. production sites favored in 2003-2005 sales expansion.(Economic Outlook)
November 1, 2003... Although all cyclical upturns have some common characteristics, each one is also unique. GDP growth will be at about the same pace as it was in the last cyclical expansion--4 percent in the United States, 2 percent in Europe, 8 percent in...

Tensilica's better mousetrap: configurable microprocessor IP is winning hearts and designs.(Profile)
November 1, 2003... Dozens of semiconductor IP companies have sprung up in recent years, but none appear to have built any better mousetrap than Tensilica's configurable microprocessor cores. Founded in 1997, Tensilica develops RISC processor cores--called...

Coming soon to a proxy statement near you.(Stock Options)
November 1, 2003... The 2004 proxy season, coming this spring, will be the first test of how shareholders will treat companies seeking to increase the number of shares they can offer as stock options. Nearly three quarters of public technology companies...

Where there's life, there's hope.(Business Barometer)
November 1, 2003... This month's survey of purchasing managers shows some life in the electronics industry. Roughly a third of businesses expect business conditions to improve and two-thirds believe conditions will remain the same for next 30 days. Stability, in...

For Motorola, the chips are down: falling out of the top 10, it spins off its semiconductor division.(Semiconductors)
November 1, 2003... After Motorola spun off noncore businesses and pursued an "asset-lite" strategy of reducing its number of manufacturing facilities, it's not surprising that the company has fallen off the top 10 list of semiconductor suppliers, based on...

Looking for the silver lining: a Q&A with Mentor Graphics CEO Wally Rhines.(Electronic Design Automation)
November 1, 2003... The week Walden "Wally" Rhines marked his 10th anniversary as chairman and CEO of EDA firm Mentor Graphics, he also reflected on the fall and rise of his company. Once it was on top of the EDA heap, looking down on Daisy Systems and Valid Logic...

Remedies for an insecure supply chain: electronics companies weigh multiple choices.(Supply Chain Management)
November 1, 2003... It wasn't that long ago that saying that a supply chain was "secure" meant that it was hacker-proof. Now, it also has to be terrorist-proof. Security-conscious executives are facing an alphabet soup of post-9/11 security initiatives...

Lead-free logistics.(Environmental Issues)
November 1, 2003... If you think going lead-free is largely a manufacturing problem, think again. A little less lead may cause big problems for the supply chain. To date, the electronics industry has endeavored to develop lead-free pastes and solders in...

Open standard ATE engenders open debate: Advantest launches its T2000, as debate rages on.(Capital Equipment)
November 1, 2003... Development and promotion of an open, industrywide standard for automated test equipment (ATE) has yet to cause the chip tester to go the way of the commodity PC, as some predict. And aside from the handful of original proponents, the industry...

Making waves in Washington: how some scrappy little ultra-wideband companies fought to gain FCC approval and learned some hard lessons along the way.(Regulation)
November 1, 2003... WHEN RALPH PETROFF SAW what ultra-wideband (UWB) technology could do for wireless communications, his life took an unexpected turn. Petroff and his two brothers had just sold their successful pollution-control business in Huntsville, Ala. He...

The drive for silicon: safety and entertainment rev up new chip opportunities.(Automotive Systems)
November 1, 2003... If there's a light at the end of the downturn's tunnel, it's mobile computing. Not necessarily wireless networking, mind you, but rather the proliferation of electronics in automobiles. Research firm Allied Business Intelligence predicts...

Safety.(Automotive Systems)
November 1, 2003... SMARTER AIRBAG SYSTEMS will adjust the deployment of airbags based on the weight of occupants and accident conditions. These require intelligent sensors, which will both integrate analog and digital functions (such as voltage regulation) into...

Engines and drivetrains.(Automotive Systems)
November 1, 2003... INCREASED POWER DEMANDS may eventually mandate that 42-volt electrical systems reduce the amount of current and cabling in today's standard 12V systems. But electronics vendors contend that the latter, with modification, can stay on the road...

Entertainment and biometrics.(Automotive Systems)
November 1, 2003... BLACK BOXES--the automotive counterpart of the recorders used to discover the causes of airplane crashes--are gaining popularity with fleet owners, because deployment can decrease insurance rates. About twice the size of a cell phone, the...

The ties that bind: Taiwan's United Microelectronics Corp. looks to partnerships to improve its foundry business.(Profile)
November 1, 2003... United Microelectronics Corp. Chairman Robert Tsao has never shied away from trying something new. He founded UMC, Taiwan's first semiconductor company, in Hsinchu in 1980, as a traditional integrated device manufacturer (IDM) that designed,...

Big bang in Penang: can an ambitious federal government pull off a Malaysian miracle?(Malaysia)
November 1, 2003... What was once a vast Malaysian rice field 30 years ago is now a free trade zone in and out of which flows the work of 700 electronics companies and 175,000 Malaysian workers. From a standing start in the 1970s, with an economy dominated by...