Electronic Business articles from September 2003

Electronic Business archives from September 2003

Another option for expensing options: the technology industry should look for a middle ground in the options debate to protect innovation.(Editor's Note)(Editorial)
September 1, 2003... As we noted earlier this summer in our story "Kissing Options Goodbye," last year's corporate excess generated an outcry to tighten financial regulations, with stock options being one of the the chief targets. The Financial Accounting Standards...

Labor pains.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... Beth Stackpole's article on H-1B visas ["H-1B Debate Cools Down--for Now," June 15, 2003, page 18] falls short in explaining the "cooling down" in the use, or abuse, of the H-1B. The new L-1 visa, which allows companies to continue using...

Why Qualcomm can't be beat.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... The most significant reference in Bill Roberts' piece on Qualcomm ["Riding the Big Wireless Wave," July 1, page 54] is a quote from Tim Luke of Lehman, correctly observing that most all wireless telephony will use CDMA within a few years....

Clarifications.(Correction Notice)
September 1, 2003... Due to an editing error, the headline in a text box on page 18 of the August 2003 issue was unclear; it should have read, "China Becomes Top Exporter to United States."

Our 3-D future: graphics processors are going everywhere.(Chip Advisor)
September 1, 2003... Three-dimensional graphics conquered the PC in the 1990s. You can't buy a PC today that doesn't have a 3-D accelerator. PCs for game enthusiasts have 3-D chips that are faster and more capable than million-dollar graphics supercomputers from...

Linux under fire.(Management)
September 1, 2003... SCO Group Inc. opened a mainframe-size can of worms when it sued IBM Corp. in March, alleging that Big Blue had violated its UNIX System V license by allowing copyrighted UNIX source code into the open source Linux operating system. Recent...

Blast from the past: even with positive signs, visibility is still limited.(Economic Outlook)
September 1, 2003... It is 1999 all over again. The electronics market is emerging from several years of sluggish sales with no sustained trend, slim profits, plunging product prices, layoffs, excess supply and facility shutdowns. Ahead, if the consensus forecasts...

Traveling LAN: MachineTalker develops a vehicle-based wireless network.(Mobile Systems)
September 1, 2003... Most wireless local-area networks (WLANs) are designed to operate within homes, businesses or public places. But MachineTalker Inc. wants to take WLANs on the road by placing the technology inside vehicles. The Goleta, CA, start-up has...

Options expensing prompts fresh look at compensation.(Finance)
September 1, 2003... Microsoft Corp.'s surprising announcement over the summer that it would cease giving stock options to its employees has high-tech executives scratching their beads, wondering whether and how to change their company's compensation strategy. ...

National finds a buyer for Geode unit.(Update)
September 1, 2003... National Semiconductor Corp., Santa Clara, CA, found a buyer for its Information Appliance (IA) business and struck a deal with an activist shareholder to avoid a proxy battle this month. The deal took place after the press deadline for EB's...

Optimism is up, but so are prices.(Business Barometer)
September 1, 2003... This month's polling of purchasing managers shows businesses reacting to a slight increase in consumer spending and no changes in interest rates. Over a third are expecting business conditions to improve over the next 30 days. One in four are...

Mind the gap: play leapfrog with new design nodes at your own risk.(Semiconductors)
September 1, 2003... There's a gap emerging between those who can afford to push beyond 90 nanometers and those who can't. The chip behemoths--IBM, Intel, TI, Samsung, Toshiba and STMicroelectronics, among others--have much to gain from a drive to 65 nm, 45 nm...

Integration at last: EDA vendors finally move to make their tools work better together.(ElectronicDesign Automation)
September 1, 2003... Cadence Design Systems Inc. and Synopsys Inc. used to give lip service to the notion that EDA tools should interoperate. Now they're taking action to make it easier for EDA customers to pick and choose. Everyone--EDA vendors and EDA...

Catalog distributors are expanding: lots of little orders add up.(Supply Chain Management)
September 1, 2003... While leaders in the volume distribution business are closing or consolidating operations, catalog distributors are on an expansion spree. In March, for example, NewarkInOne, a Chicago-based catalog house, expanded its semiconductor...

Score one for the board industry.(Regulations)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... THANKS IN LARGE PART to the lobbying efforts of the IPC (formerly the Institute for Printed Circuits), wastewater treatment standards for 16 industrial metal products and machinery (MP&M) sectors--including the printed wiring board...

Less excess--no thanks to demand: excess semiconductor inventory at quarter's end.(Inventory)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2003... SHIPMENTS TO REPLENISH inventory in the supply chain allowed chip companies to reduce their excess inventory by $1 billion between Q4 of 2002 and Q1 of 2003. upstream inventory levels at the end of 2002 left most industry segments with less...

Deep ultraviolet resuscitated: optical litho may yet again live longer than anyone thought.(Capital Equipment)
September 1, 2003... Optical lithography tends to be the Methuselah of semiconductor process technology; just when the technology seems to have reached its practical, cost-effective limits, the industry finds a way to extend it. With deep-submicron feature sizes...

The ups and downs of contract manufacturing: Flextronics and Solectron show how--and how not--to ride out a downturn.(Top Contract Manufacturers)
September 1, 2003... SOLECTRON CORP. was riding high in 1999, the year it became the largest contract manufacturer (CM) in the world. All CMs grew during the 1990s but none faster than Solectron, whose revenues rose from $300 million in 1989 to $8.4 billion a...

The set-top tightrope trauma: just when suppliers of embedded processors for set-top boxes thought it was safe to build one-chip solutions, the question of how to juggle the integration of new features gets complicated again.(Embedded Processors)
September 1, 2003... IT'S DECISION TIME all over again for makers o chips for set-top boxes (STBs), which serve as the junction between cable or satellite television networks and TV sets. Over the past few years, the industry, which dates back in the mid-1990s,...

Unleashing UWB: ultra-wideband may become the next big wireless technology, but its commercial success depends on the outcome of a contentious standards battle.(Communications)
September 1, 2003... MORE THAN 300 TECHNOLOGY executives and engineers converged on a Dallas hotel in January to try to shape the direction of ultra wideband (UWB), a revolutionary new technology that may turn out to be the next big thing in wireless networking....

Europe plays new role in contract manufacturing coalitions: strengths of Eastern Europe facilities complement Far East assemblies.(Commentary)
September 1, 2003... If you'd like to see a true international coalition in action, consider this example in the electronics manufacturing world: In its China facilities, Taiwan-based Foxconn assembles printed circuit boards for computers designed and branded by...