The bible of high tech selling, Marketing High Technology by Bill Davidow, gives an example of how tricky pricing can be: “The first really powerful 8-bit microprocessor on the market was Intel’s 8080,” writes Davidow, “it had been preceded by a lower-performance device, the 8008, which initially sold for $36.“ “Since the 8080 had ten times the performance of the ...

Synopsys says it has stopped providing Huawei with updates to its software and has suspended sales of new software. The pressure is now on Cadence to follow suit.  Whereas Synopsys employees have been told not to engage with Huawei, apparently Cadence employees have not. Mentor Systems, now a Siemens subsidiary, could provide part of the EDA pie but not all of ...

Q1 flash contract prices fell dramatically on Q4, says DRAMeXchange. Contract pricing for eMMC/UFS fell 15-20%; for Client SSD it fell 17-31%; and for Enterprise SSD it fell 26-32%. Samsung revenues fell 25%, Toshiba dropped 20%, Hynix fell 26%; Intel dropped 17%, Western Digital fell 26% and Micron fell 18%. “The weakening demand in 4Q18 has pushed smartphone and server ...

Arm has given up control of its technology to China, reports the Nikkei. A joint venture called Arm mini China – which is 51% owned by Chinese interests, principally the Hou-An Innovation Fund – has taken control of licensing Arm IP to Chinese companies. “With this joint-venture, China expects to secure sources of technology, especially for some sensitive chips that ...

5G was unveiled in six cities in the UK yesterday. EE, the wireless subsidiary of BT, has opened a service in Belfast, London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Birmingham and Manchester. For those living in not-spots, or with only a GPRS signal, the news will seem ironic. As with previous generations of cellular technology the initial roll-out is mainly to relieve congestion. Although, ...

Q1 shipments of wearable devices reached 49.6 million units, up 55.2% y-o-y, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker. While wrist-worn wearables accounted for the majority of the market with 63.2% share, ear-worn devices experienced the fastest growth (135.1% year over year) and accounted for 34.6% of all wearables shipped. Shipments of wristwear – including watches and wristbands – grew ...

MagnaChip, the Korean analogue and mixed-signal foundry, is offering its second generation 0.13 micron embedded flash technology with 20V and 30V high-voltage options. The technology is specifically designed to address the needs for multi-function hybrid mixed-signal products, including touch ICs, fingerprint readout ICs and wireless power charger ICs. With the growing complexity of analog and mixed-signal functions, IC designers are facing ...

Hollow laughs were heard all over the UK yesterday when our first 5G network was launched. Those in not-spots, and those thankful to get GPRS and Edge, will regard the ‘launch’ as a bad joke. As with 3G and 4G, 5G is being rolled out mainly to relieve congestion. For a few giddy months, early adopters may wallow in a ...

Inventory corrections, slowing smartphone shipments, and pullbacks in purchase orders throttled sales growth in semiconductor sensors and actuators last year, resulting in a subpar 6% increase in 2018 to a record-high $14.7 billion after double-digit percentage gains in 2017 and 2016, according to IC Insights’ 2019 O-S-D Report—A Market Analysis and Forecast for Optoelectronics, Sensors/Actuators, and Discretes. The downtrend in ...

Encapsulated power modules from Renesas Electronics are now available from distributor, RS Components. The ISL8210M, ISL8212M, ISL82180M and ISL8282M power modules are single-channel, synchronous step-down power modules that provide PoL conversion for fpgas, dsps, asics and memory in servers, storage, optical networking, telecoms and industrial applications. The modules deliver 10A or 15A continuous current at PoL and combine a pwm controller, inductor ...