Electronic Business articles from October 2006

Electronic Business archives from October 2006

Medicine: Think long-term.
October 1, 2006... By John Dodge, Editor-in-Chief You are naive if you believe that technology will bail out our ailing healthcare system. The argument sounds logical: information technology in the form of electronic health records, e-prescribing and...

Big (semiconductor) spenders.(Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc.)
October 1, 2006... Compiled by Senior Editor Barbara Jorgensen Market Overview Hewlett-Packard Co. is expected to remain the world's top OEM semiconductor purchaser in 2006, buying $13.6 billion worth of chips for the year, according to market research...

After the icon is gone....
October 1, 2006... By Tam Harbert, Contributing Writer Call it the midlife crisis of the technology industry. As such icons as Bill Gates and Scott McNealy reach their 50s and 60s, they are leaving their CEO jobs and handing the reins of their companies to...

Patent problems in China?
October 1, 2006... By Sally Cole Johnson, Contributing Writer China is making significant strides to improve its legal proceedings and procedures since joining the World Trade Organization in 2001 and is also busy cracking down on enforcement of...

Is graphics-on-a-CPU getting close?(central processing unit)
October 1, 2006... By Dean Takahashi, Contributing Writer The acquisition of 3-D graphics chip maker ATI Technologies by Advanced Micro Devices will go down as one of the earthquakes that changed the landscape of the PC chip business. It was so unlikely...

Oil dollars pave way for high tech.
October 1, 2006... By Drew Wilson, Contributing Writer Russia is taking in an estimated $500 million daily from crude oil exports and plowing a couple of day's worth into the domestic semiconductor industry. In total, the government has announced plans...

OEMs try to take control of their supply chain.
October 1, 2006... By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor It's one thing to track product returns, but it's quite another to figure out whether the problem originated in the supply chain or somewhere else. Add RoHS and other environmental regulations to...

Skype seeds grow GaAs crystals in Estonia.(Gallium arsenide)(Clifton Semiconductor)
October 1, 2006... By Drew Wilson, Contributing Writer Estonia, a tiny country with 1.4 million people, defied the USSR, reestablished independence and joined NATO and the European Union, all in just 13 years. When some of those energies were redirected...

Luminus brightens image.(LED-based rear-projection TVs from Samsung and NuVision)(Editorial)
October 1, 2006... By John Dodge, Editor-in-Chief The LED-based rear-projection TV from Samsung that dazzled visitors at the Consumer Electronics Show in January has finally hit the market, and another LED unit from Hong Kong-based NuVision was announced...

Market salutes stand-up storage technology.(perpendicular magnetic recording technology)
October 1, 2006... By Debra Bulkeley, Executive Editor Last year when Apple Computer decided to use flash memory rather than hard disk drives in its iPod Nano MP3 players, some thought the move sounded like the death knell for disk drives in consumer...

Bluetooth's finally fullfilling promise.
October 1, 2006... By Russ Arensman, Contributing Writer It took longer than expected, but the Bluetooth chip market is finally taking off, thanks to surging demand for wireless connectivity between cell phones, wireless headsets, PCs, autos and a growing...

Multiprocessor chips get with the program(er)--or try to.
October 1, 2006... By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor While the number of ASIC design starts drops, the complexity of the chips is on the rise. The result is an increasing number of devices that are outfitted with multiple processor cores and...

Flip chip packaging market flips up.
October 1, 2006... By Sally Cole Johnson, Contributing Writer You may not even know it's there, but odds are good you have a flip chip very close by. The pervasive little chips are in almost all of today's hot consumer gadgets, ranging from cell phones and...

Winners take all.(Texas Instruments' wafer fab)
October 1, 2006... By Bill Roberts Texas Instruments, the state and the environment all got what they needed from a new 300-millimeter wafer fab Time will tell if Texas Instruments ' new 300-millimeter wafer fab lives up to its advanced billing, but at...

PLM: The missing link?(product lifecycle management software)
October 1, 2006... By Geoffrey James, Contributing Writer Product lifecycle management isn't just for the Fortune 1000 any more Product lifecycle management--software that tracks a product through design, manufacturing and support--until quite recently...

Freescale steps out from Motorola's shadow.(Freescale Semiconductor)(Brief article)
October 1, 2006... By Tam Harbert After two years of quiet restructuring, the former chip division grabs the spotlight. Considering that it's the third-largest semiconductor company in the United States, Freescale Semiconductor had not been getting...

House calls make a comeback.
October 1, 2006... By Tam Harbert, Contributing Writer Tech companies see a healthy market in home medical devices The electronics industry thinks it has the right prescription for the world's ailing health care systems: digital technology and...

IP theft: Book 'em, Dan-o.
October 1, 2006... By Bill Roberts The feds sent John J. O'Neil up the river this summer. He got a year and a day for his crime. Lucky for him, the sentence doesn't fall on a leap year. O'Neil, former CEO of Business Engine Software Corp. (BES) in San...

An exercise in balance.(Carla Mahrt's services)(Thumbnail biography)
October 1, 2006... By Barbara Jorgensen, Senior Editor Anyone who has spent any time in electronics distribution will readily admit it's a male-dominated industry. That's not to say it doesn't give talented women--such as Tyco's Carla Mahrt--their due....