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Happy 40th birthday microprocessor

Happy 40th birthday microprocessor
by Paul McLellan on 11-16-2011 at 10:22 pm

Intel has been making a little bit of a PR fuss about the 40th anniversary of the microprocessor. And they are entitled to. The Intel 4004 was the first customer-programmable chip. Of course if you look at it’s capabilities today they are laughably minimal, and even looking at the chip, a 16-pin DIP (dual-in-line-package … Read More


Who is winning the cell-phone wars?

Who is winning the cell-phone wars?
by Paul McLellan on 11-15-2011 at 2:17 pm

Answer: it depends how you count. Units, market share, revenue, profit.

According to Gartner, Android has doubled its market share and now run just over half of the world’s smartphones. Android handset sales actually tripled during the year, selling 61 million last quarter, not that far off a million a day.

iPhone sales … Read More


Jen Hsun Huang’s Game Over Strategy for Windows 8!

Jen Hsun Huang’s Game Over Strategy for Windows 8!
by Ed McKernan on 11-15-2011 at 6:00 am

It is always a treat to listen to the nVidia earnings conference call as Jen Hsun Huang offers his take on the industry as well as a peek at his company’s future plans. Invariably a Wall St. analyst will ask about Windows 8 and Project Denver – the code name for the ARM based processor designed to run Windows 8 with great graphics performance… Read More


Meg Whitman Should Buy AMD and Take HP Back To Its Roots

Meg Whitman Should Buy AMD and Take HP Back To Its Roots
by Ed McKernan on 10-31-2011 at 11:16 am

Back in the 2008 financial Crises, GM was finally brought to its knees and had to face a radical makeover. They asked for a bailout from the government that allowed the unions to swap out lower compensation for equity, something no union would do unless the alternative was to shutter the doors. The bondholders and the shareholders… Read More


Apple is Giving Samsung Semiconductor A Splitting Headache

Apple is Giving Samsung Semiconductor A Splitting Headache
by Ed McKernan on 10-18-2011 at 5:00 pm

Vertical integration, as I have noted in previous blogs, is the way to domination and maximum profitability. That is unless someone else has beaten you to the punch with an even bettermodel. Apple is now executing a product and manufacturing supplier strategy that will force Samsung to lose lots of money and then ultimately split… Read More


From IBM Mainframes to Wintel PCs to Apple iPhones: 70% is the Magic Number

From IBM Mainframes to Wintel PCs to Apple iPhones: 70% is the Magic Number
by Ed McKernan on 10-12-2011 at 10:51 am

Time to ring the Bell. With the iPhone 4S, Apple has just surpassed the 70% gross margin metric that usually equates to a compute platform becoming an industry standard. IBM’s mainframe achieved it in the 1960s with the 360 series and still is able to crank it out with their Z-series. The combined Intel and Microsoft tandem (Wintel)… Read More


Making Money With Cramer? Don’t Count on it!

Making Money With Cramer? Don’t Count on it!
by Daniel Nenni on 10-02-2011 at 11:16 pm

Investing with Cramer is a crap shoot. By Cramer, I mean the Mad Money TV show, and Action Alerts PLUS from thestreet.com. Cramer is certainly a smart guy and knows his stuff, but don’t think following his investment strategy is necessarily a winner. He constantly maintains that you can beat the averages by picking individualRead More


Battle of the Patents

Battle of the Patents
by Paul McLellan on 09-27-2011 at 5:01 pm

What’s going on in all these wireless patent battles? And why?

The first thing to understand is that implementing most (all?) wireless standards involves infringing on certain “essential patents.” The word “essential” means that if you meet the standard, you infringe the patent, there is no way around it. You can’t build a CDMA… Read More


Apple Plays Saudi Arabia’s Role in the Semiconductor Market

Apple Plays Saudi Arabia’s Role in the Semiconductor Market
by Ed McKernan on 09-27-2011 at 12:08 am

The retirement of Steve Jobs left most commentators wondering if Tim Cook could lead Apple marching ever onward and upward. In truth, Tim Cook’s contribution on the operations side has been just as instrumental in the destruction of Apple’s PC and consumer electronics competitors as Jobs’ product vision. Under Tim Cook’s guidance,… Read More


Apple’s Supply Chain

Apple’s Supply Chain
by Paul McLellan on 09-21-2011 at 5:48 pm

I am doing some consulting right now for a company that shall remain nameless, and one of the things I have had to look at is Apple’s supply chain. I came across an interesting article by someone with the goal to “buy a MacBook Air that isn’t made by Apple.” He is in the UK and doesn’t like Apple’s… Read More