The Q2 numbers for smartphones are now all in and the basic story is that Google is now registering an incredible million Android phones per day, half of them made by Samsung. That’s 85% of all the smartphones shipped last quarter. Android has (per IDC) 68% market share of all smartphones out there.
Apple grew by double digit… Read More
The High Tech Trial of this Century: Apple vs. Samsung may end up being the catalyzing event that advances the established PC Monopolists known as Wintel (Microsoft and Intel) into leadership positions in the new era known as the Mobile Tsunami. Not a chance you say? Consider that the Apple, Samsung War is one that will not be settled… Read More
Not yet a year into Rory Read’s term and the AMD board must be considering that the value of the x86 patents and engineering talent is worth much more than the stocks $3B valuation and easier to fathom putting on the auction block than continuing to sell $25 processors into the back channels of China and the Developing World. As I read… Read More
What does mango beer have to do with semiconductor design and manufacturing? At a table of beer drinkers from around the world I would have never thought fruity beer would pass a taste test, not even close. As it turns out, the mango beer is very good! Same goes for 20nm planar devices. “Will not work”, “Will not yield”, “Will not scale”,… Read More
Behind great humor often lies irony. In the midst of a struggle by the European Union to extract $1.3B from Intel in an ages old Anti-Trust case, the latter makes a strategic move to embolden the Dutch firm ASML to accelerate the development of 450mm and EUV and thus save a continental jewel. What now say EU? When disfunction and bankruptcy… Read More
Tuesday morning at DAC I attended the Synopsys-hosted breakfast to hear from foundries and ARM about the challenges of designing and delivering silicon at the 32nm/28nm and 20nm nodes.
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News today is that Moody’s has downgraded Nokia to junk status. They also announced that they will lay off 10,000 people (including about 1 in 4 of the people they employ in Finland, where Nokia is headquartered).
For those of you who don’t know all the inside-baseball stuff about Nokia, here is a recent little history.… Read More
Wednesday morning I attended a panel discussion with: ARM, IBM, Cadence, GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Samsung.
The panelists all sang the same song of collaboration between EDA, IP and Foundry to enable 28nm, 20nm and even 14nm.… Read More
Just days after I posted a blog on an early September iPhone 5 launch, the spies from Asia started flooding the rumor mills with Apple supply chain maneuvers that are not easily hidden suggesting that D-Day logistics are farther along than we imagined. This flood of information, coupled with the heightened Samsung-Apple Battle… Read More
While I was marlin fishing in Hawaii last week I missed some interesting comments from TSMC executives at the Technology Symposium in Taiwan, a much different show than the one here in San Jose I’m told. It is good to see TSMC setting the record straight and taking a little credit for what they have accomplished! I’m sorry I missed it… Read More
