Business, Financial & Legal - Page 161

Texas Instruments makes all sorts of chips for a vast range of devices running from mobile phones and set top boxes to other electronic devices that you probably don't even know they work with. TI runs its own fabs where it builds its chips itself rather than being a fabless semiconductor firm like some that farm out the actual construction of their chips to someone else.

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TI has announced today that it has acquired a new analog semiconductor fab in China. The fab is the first that TI has in China, is located in Chengdu, and will be known as TI Chengdu. The fab is a fully equipped 200mm fabrication facility and TI purchased the fab from Cension Semiconductor Manufacturing Company at an undisclosed price.

The fab facility is 120,000 square feet and TI claims it can support about $1 billion in annual revenue. The purchase also included an additional 134,000 square foot fab that is reserved for future production needs. "TI has been committed to serving the China market for 25 years," said Gregg Lowe, TI senior vice president for Analog. "Increasingly, customers there are using TI's analog chips for the real-world functions in their electronic applications. This fab in Chengdu will strengthen our ability to support customers' growing requirements and deliver analog products when and where customers need them."

The lads over at KitGuru have an interesting interview with Richard Huddy of AMD.

Telstra is really stretching out lately - another news bit, that they are upgrading their online bill payment facilities after research showed online payment as the preferred method of customers paying their phone bills.

Microsoft's search engine "Bing", will soon allow searchers to see results generated by their Facebook friends' use of the "like" button.

Telstra has named their new CIO today.

Meet, Patrick Eltridge:

Right now there's no confirmation, but the one thing that should interest you is the news caused Adobe Systems stock to rise 17% before falling slightly down to 11.5% higher than before the rumour. Microsoft shares rose by 0.4%.

AMD is stamping it's one year anniversary of the AMD Fusion Partner Program by introducing the AMD Fusion Partner Program distributor track. The expanded program will give distributors access to all of the benefits and goodies within the AMD Fusion Partner Program to help increases sales of AMD-based solutions. AMD is also introducing the AMD Rewards Program - which is being used to add sales-based incentives for partners to increase channel sales growth.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TMSC) might be showing off a glimpse of the future of chip manufacturing tech smaller than 20nm when it pulls back the curtain on it's latest research involving FinFET transistors at a chip industry event later this year.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has recommended to Telstra to lower their wholesale pricing to their copper network. iiNet's chief regulatory officer, Steve Dalby doesn't seem to think it will get Telstra to play ball.

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The ACCC recommends a price reduction in wholesale line rental (WLR) (the price an ISP pays to provide a line when not connected to their own infrastructure) on top of a recommendation to drop the local carriage service (LCS) pricing.

While the price drops for WLR and LCS are recommended from the ACCC's report, they don't recommend a change in the line sharing service (LSS) which let's a company supply ADSL services using their own equipment in Telstra exchanges. Also left out, is ULLS which is the supply of a service from a whole copper line, from the exchange to the home.

Dalby had the following to say in regards to the ACCC's report, "Telstra has never taken any notice of the pricing principles when setting its wholesale prices, and is not likely to do so on this occasion."

It will be a while before we see the waves from these reports crash upon the shores of ISP's wholesale costing - but with the moves in the market of the terabyte (or more) plans - it's starting to not really matter to the consumer, but to the ISP's.

Intel and McAfee are two companies that most are familiar with. Intel is the largest maker of processors in the world and McAfee is one of the largest PC security companies around with antivirus software and more. Intel has announced that it plans to purchase McAfee at $48 per share in cash. The value of the deal is about $7.68 billion.

Foxconn has been in the news a lot lately after ten workers at one of its Chinese factories where Apple products are built have killed themselves this year. Some blame harsh working conditions at the plant for the suicides.

You might recall that cool dual screen Courier concept that Microsoft was showing off. I know I was looking forward to seeing how the device turned out. If you were interesting in the project, we have bad news today.

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Microsoft has decided to kill off the Courier tablet. The cancellation is surprising considering that we had been hearing the device was on track to hit stores in 2011.

Microsoft's Frank Shaw told Gizmodo, "At any given time, we're looking at new ideas, investigating, testing, incubating them. It's in our DNA to develop new form factors and natural user interfaces to foster productivity and creativity. The Courier project is an example of this type of effort. It will be evaluated for use in future offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this time."

Anyone with half a brain knew when Apple purchased online music service Lala that its days were numbered. Apple was either looking to axe some competition or was out to integrate Lala into its own online subscription music offering (or both).

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I know I am hoping for the second option and according to TechCruch sources are telling it that is exactly what will happen and perhaps as early as June. Lala will be available for existing subscribers until May 31. No new subscribers are being accepted.

Apparently, anyone with money left in Lala will have the funds transferred over to iTunes. I know many folks who may be sad to lose Lala, but will be hopeful that Apple finally offers that subscription service.

It's been known for quite a while Palm has been struggling to keep its head above water and the marketplace tells the story pretty quickly they've been failing to compete at a required level to survive in the ever growing, fast paced smartphone world.

At this rate, the end of the road for the company is not all that far away unless something drastic takes place. And that's exactly what's just happened. HP has just announced it's swallowing them up for 1.2 Billion, working out to about $5.70 per share of Palm common stock.

It's no secret that Apple has been using Intel processors for several years now. However, a story over at AppleInsider hints that perhaps Apple's relationship with Intel isn't as strong as it seems.

Rumour has it the company is considering jumping ship to AMD and has even been testing AMD based chipsets in their labs. But there's no form of substantial evidence to support this as yet.

Not even a week after we tell you that Apple is attempting to ban all third party compilers and porting tools we hear rumors of the law suit to be filed by Adobe. Of course we wanted to know if this was the case and so far have been told that is no grounds for the rumor. Adobe's last comment was that they were looking into the wording of the new SDK agreement, but nothing about any type of legal action.

However all of that might have changed when a statement by Steve Jobs (made in response to Greg Slepak, Co-Founder of To Effects) Jobs is trying to claim, again (Apple tried this with the Mac OS), that by allowing third party tools it will hold back the OS. However, most know that this is not the case and that regardless of the tools used some apps will still come out crappy (just look at a few in the App Store now). Slepak also commented that many apps that are popular on desktop are made by cross-compilers.

Overall I feel this is very ant-competitive and anti-consumer, this feels more like a move to ensure that developers cannot code for multiple platforms with a single set of tools.

Such a shame - boutique PC maker Hypersonic-PC has closed down. According to a message left on its website, "At this time Hypersonic-PC is not accepting any orders. We are honoring all warranties and will continue to support existing customers. All customers that currently own a Hypersonic branded PC or Notebook can contact the following numbers for direct product support."

Maybe it's just me, but If you swipe something from an Apple Store without the employees knowing it you might not want to post the item on eBay for sale stating that you liberated it from the store. An eBay auction has turned up for a stair from the Apple Store on 5th Ave in NYC.

A few years ago at a CES party I met a trio of MPAA lawyers hanging out with us tech media folk. Who would have ever thought I would get a chance to chat these guys and gals up when they were off guard and drinking up others party favors? I have to admit that they didn't appear to be the sleaze balls I pictured, they were young and had the kind of charm that you would find when taking a trip to Kansas. Seeing my opportunity I had to ask about their own music / movie downloading habits. To my surprise all three admitted to downloading both music and moves from the internet but wouldn't suggest others do it because "now days people are watching."


One group that is currently under the microscope is Newzbin Ltd. What makes Newzbin different than the Torrent trackers is that it catalogs some of the internet's oldest files that sit on Usenet. Newzbin does not have their own Usenet servers but simply catalogs and organizes. The MPAA feeling like they own the Internet has chose Newzbin as their latest victim of legal harassment and court proceedings are already underway.


Newzbin has taken to updating the court proceedings on their home page that serves as a news page. It seems that things are not looking too good for the company at this point but Lady Justice has yet to sing. You can read about the updates by clicking on the News Source link below.

The following news story was submitted by Jim Handy of Objective Analysis.


Late Tuesday Micron announced that the company had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Numonyx in an all-stock transaction. Micron will issue 140 million shares of the company's common stock, worth approximately $1.27 billion, to Numonyx shareholders Intel, STMicroelectronics, and Francisco Partners.


Micron Re-Enters NOR

The NOR flash market has been a difficult one for nearly all participants. Leaders Numonyx and Spansion have suffered losses for several years, with Spansion recently turning a profit through a strategy largely focused upon markets for low-density parts used by markets outside of cell handsets, the largest consumer of NOR flash. Micron itself participated in NOR starting in the late 1990s, but abandoned this effort in 2006.
By acquiring Numonyx, Micron is buying the current leader in the market, a position Numonyx is believed to have held for the past two quarters. Numonyx should add roughly $1.5 billion to Micron's revenue stream at today's run rate, increasing the company's share of the semiconductor memory market. Objective Analysis projects for the memory market to explode in 2010, and this is likely to amplify the impact of this acquisition.


What Does Micron Get?

Numonyx is first and foremost a manufacturer of high-density NOR flash. NOR flash has been a large market, but not a profitable one. High-density NOR competes against NAND for camera phone designs, and NAND prices have been depressed for the last three years, dragging NOR prices down with them.
The company has strong technology, a good IP portfolio (which may have strings tied back to parents Intel and ST), one production 200mm fab, and a shell built for a 300mm fab in Sicily.

One key difference between Numonyx and both Spansion and Samsung, the other two competitors in the high-density NOR market, is that Numonyx has been ardently pursuing the phase-change memory (PCM) market, which is expected to take off once NOR flash hits its scaling limit. Interestingly, Numonyx' PCM is licensed from Ovonyx, a company founded by former Micron executive Tyler Lowrey. With the acquisition Micron will gain significant experience in this technology, for which Numonyx had first revenue shipments in late 2008.


What About Hynix?

It is unclear what this means to the Hynix/Numonyx relationship. Numonyx was using Hynix as a NAND and DRAM foundry under a deal in which Numonyx provided flash technology to Hynix. Numonyx also has a 21% stake in a Hynix wafer fab in Wuxi, China. We will be watching this to see what develops.


Executing a Typical Strategy

Micron has a penchant for acquiring companies at a low point in the market using depressed Micron stock to fund the transaction. Perhaps the most notable example is the company's acquisition of Texas Instruments' DRAM business in 1998. Although Intel, STmicroelectronics, and Francisco Partners today will receive $1.27 billion worth of Micron stock at today's prices, this stock is quite likely to increase in value by the end of next year, leading to gains for the parent companies, while allowing Micron to perform the purchase at a relative bargain. This projection is based on Objective Analysis' projection that DRAM prices will behave in their typical manner, remaining roughly level through the end of 2011, when the next overcapacity should begin.

All in all Objective Analysis anticipates that this will be a good deal for both buyer and sellers. This is the kind of deal we expected to see more of during the current downturn, a kind of hallmark for Micron.

Jim Handy
OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS
PO Box 440
Los Gatos, CA 95031-0440
USA
www.Objective-Analysis.com