Electronic Business articles from October 2004

Electronic Business archives from October 2004

Simple pleasures: the complexity of consumer products will stunt growth.(Editor's Note)
October 1, 2004... They are all so tempting. The flat-panel plasma TV that hangs on the wall. That rear-projection HDTV with a breathtakingly crisp display. That digital camera that lets you e-mail snapshots of the kids to mom. With prices steadily falling on all...

School daze.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2004... Regarding Tam Harbert's article "Where Have All the EEs Gone?" (August 2004, page 13), college students are no longer majoring in electrical engineering because they understand that corporations do not want to hire them. The students understand...

Is communism to blame?(Letters)(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2004... I found Geoffrey James' article about doing business in China ("Fighting for Your Rights," August 2004, page 58) quite interesting. My company is beginning the process of finding a technical representative for our products in China. James...

Musical chairs in China: should we stay, or should we go?(Commentary)
October 1, 2004... Global CEOs' mad dash to manufacture their products in China and the Chinese government's drive to become a leading economy are resulting in a game of musical chairs, in which people, factories and technologies are swiftly changing places on a...

R&D has a New York state of mind: the Empire State is one of many investing in basic research for electronics.(Academia)(Research & Development )
October 1, 2004... The state of New York has seen the future, and it looks like nanotechnology. The state government is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into R&D initiatives, across the nanotech spectrum, at several state universities. Nearly $400 million...

Putting the brake on electronics: Mercedes reverses its rush to add cutting-edge gadgets and features.(Automotive Electronics)
October 1, 2004... A DaimlerChrysler executive recently raised a few eyebrows in the semiconductor world when he vowed to put fewer electronic gadgets in Mercedes-Benz cars and to take a go-slow approach to adding electronic features in the future. With...

Battle looms over Regulation Fair Disclosure: SEC slaps Siebel with second suit.(Finance)
October 1, 2004... A looming legal fight between software company Siebel Systems and the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission over Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) could clarify some of the grayest areas of the rule. Until then, however, executives would do...

Tyco Electronics weathers the storm: facing crises head-on, management keeps $10 billion unit on track.(Management)
October 1, 2004... Juergen Gromer doesn't want to look back at the last three years--and who can blame him? Over that time, Gromer, president of Tyco International's second-largest division, Tyco Electronics, was fielding customer questions about the long-term...

Sales head over the hill: get ready for slower sales growth and tighter supply conditions.(Economic Outlook)
October 1, 2004... It was hard to recognize when it happened, but the electronics industry hit the peak of this current expansion cycle back in Q2 or early Q3 of 2004. As we move forward into 2005, shipments may continue to grow from their current high level, but...

Temperatures and confidence dropping.(Business Barometer)(electronics industry)(Illustration)
October 1, 2004... This month's polling of purchasing managers shows that confidence in the electronics industry is waning. Less than one in four believe that business conditions will improve over the next 30 days. While capacity utilization is expected to remain...

Building better antennas: smart chips will extend the capacity and clarity of wireless networks.(Semiconductors)
October 1, 2004... A communications technology with roots in 1960s military radar systems is about to become the next big thing in cell phones and wireless networking. And that presents a potentially attractive new market for chip makers. Smart...

If semiconductors are strong, why the panic on Wall Street? Why the tech analysts disagree with the financial analysts.(Financial Issues)
October 1, 2004... Just as everyone was starting to get comfortable and have fun again, Wall Street investment firm Merrill Lynch cast a sour mood over this semiconductor cycle in July. It downgraded the entire sector from "overweight" to "underweight" (meaning...

Gender wars: EDA firms foster female employees.(Electronic Design Automation)
October 1, 2004... To avoid gender-based lawsuits, semiconductor firms must increase their female-to-male employee ratio. The relative success of EDA firms in attracting highly qualified women suggests that the semiconductor industry could learn from that sector....

Getting lean in the factory: operational efficiencies help wheel Solectron back to profits.(Supply Chain Management)
October 1, 2004... After nine losing quarters, Solectron is on a roll. The contract manufacturer finally turned a profit in the fiscal period ending May 31, 2004, with net income of $21.3 million on revenue of $3.04 billion. During that period, it lowered...

NI eyes electronic system design: National Instruments looks beyond its traditional test and measurement role.(Capital Equipment)
October 1, 2004... Will designers of electronic systems soon be able to use off-the-shelf software to design and refine their products and, in turn, use off-the-shelf hardware to test them? Are the days of hour upon laborious hour spent coding circuit designs and...

The end of innovation? If the U.S. doesn't invest more in the R of electronics R&D, the impact on the industry may be devastating.(Research And Development)
October 1, 2004... With $340 million in annual revenue, Littlefuse doesn't have the financial heft to invest in scientific inquiry that can take decades to percolate into products. The company, which makes fuses and circuit breakers for everything from cell...

Packing a one-two punch: the shift to two cores on one chip opens new frontiers of competition.(Microprocessors)
October 1, 2004... It's been a bad year for Intel. The company has canceled two microprocessors, Tejas and Jayhawk, and has pushed back its 4-gigahertz Pentium 4 until next year. CEO Craig Barrett became so fed up that he wrote a memo to employees saying, "This...

New window for old display technology: first heralded in the early 1990s as a low-cost, high-quality display technology, liquid crystal on silicon proved difficult to develop. Will high-definition TV be the right market for it?(Consumer Electronics)
October 1, 2004... EARLY THIS YEAR at the Consumer Electronics Show, Intel made a splash by announcing that it would produce liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) devices for TV displays. The chip behemoth said that it was working with TV manufacturers and promised...

Translation takes off: as device complexity continues, the parts still need to talk.(Safe bet series: a special series from TI standard linear and logic)(Advertisement)
October 1, 2004... The strength of the digital consumer market will continue to drive the need for translation level products. Most electronic systems need voltage-level translation, since some devices are capable of running at lower supply nodes while others are...