12/23/02 <link>
Lone
star in FCC?
The Seattle Times covers Michael Copps, who is waging a battle to
protect consumers against media consolidation and monopolies. "...He
has launched an ambitious challenge to FCC Chairman Michael Powell on
one of Powell's key initiatives, the relaxation of decades-old rules
that restrict who may own broadcasters and how large they can grow.
Although the biggest
battles over media ownership won't occur until spring, Copps is
winning some early skirmishes, at times outmaneuvering Powell and
maintaining a steady pressure to raise public awareness about the
issue. 'This is No. 1 on my list,' said Copps, who fears the growing
consolidation of broadcast and other media companies will stifle
viewpoints and give a handful of corporations vast power over what
Americans watch, hear and read. 'I'm determined to have a conversation
with this country on these issues before we pass a vote, and I'm going
to do everything I can to make that happen.'..."
12/13/02 <link>
Semiconductor industry facing significant
challenges
A key player in the technology economy, the semiconductor industry is
in the midst of a severe downturn, with hopes that recovery may happen
in 6-12 months. Significant
realignments and consolidation, and paradigm shifts, are forecast
for this industry as the downturn continues. The immaturity of the
higher performance segment of the current technology (130 nm) is affecting
even the bigger players. The next generation 90 nm (critical
dimension) technology rollout has been clearly
impacted by the downturn, with a flight to quality that is
pressuring the smaller players. Moreover, cost reductions predicted
through a migration to much larger Si wafers (12"/ 300 mm
diameter) are now expected to be achieved years later than previously
thought, because of immature equipment and insufficient demand.
All in all, a very challenging environment for the industry and for
Silicon Valley in particular.
11/8/02 <link>
High-tech
for Humanitarian applications
Awards co-sponsored by the Tech Museum of San Jose, CA, and Applied
Materials made to groups that bring the benefits of high-tech to
humanitarian causes. Lead winner was the The Light
Up The World Foundation which "...uses
White Light Emitting Diodes to generate comfortable reading light that
consumes only one-tenth of a watt of electricity and provides light
for 10 years. So far, the group has lit up more than 500 homes in
Nepal, 100 homes in India and 50 homes in Sri Lanka for $17,350..."
Other winners? They include:
"The
International SeaKeepers Society for equipping cruise ships,
luxury yachts and other vessels with sensors to study the oceans and
atmosphere. Data collected are transferred to scientists around the
world by the Key Biscayne, Fla.-based group....Bunker
Roy of The Barefoot College in Rajasthan, India, for teaching
practical technology skills, from solar power to rainwater harvesting
systems, to rural poor...ApproTEC,
based in San Francisco and Kenya, for developing an efficient,
low-cost irrigation pump that allows rural farmers in Africa to
increase production capacity....and Andreas
Pluckthun of the University of Zurich in Switzerland for
pioneering technology to create synthetic, or recombinant, antibodies
that might someday be used to proactively treat diseases...."
11/3/02 <link>
CD
sales decline sharply
Online sales drop more severe than retail sales. Illegal file-swapping
and sharing blamed by major players. Some online retailers disagree in
part saying that nature and quality of music is also to blame.
10/7/02 <link>
DVD industry and studios enjoying effect of booming DVD sales
DVDs have clearly skyrocketed in popularity, and will continue on this
path for a while. We will now have to wait (not too long) for the
inevitable complaints and lawsuits to pour out from the studios to
prevent DVD copying by consumers - given that DVD-recordable drives
are now slowly trickling into the market.
09/30/02 <link>
PC
industry on the decline?
Feature in the New York Times focuses on the stagnation trend in the
(desktop) PC industry (compared to its historical growth levels). We
have been seeing more and more comments on the
"Detroitization" of PCs of late, but we don't believe that
is necessarily true. Lack of any compelling need to upgrade PCs is
obvious to most of us. As long as Intel, Microsoft, et al. put more
focus on speed and incrementally better software, few consumers will
be motivated to upgrade their PCs and their software.
We believe that a continued lack of much economic vision currently
will forestall any significant advances
in enabling value-added and new services from stimulating PC growth.
Broadband is growing slower than we think it can, in part due to
reluctance from once-bitten LECs/Telcos to expand. A visionary
government in our mind could put in place resources and laws that
would help a rapid build out of "last-mile" broadband
infrastructure (somewhat along the lines of the national highway
buildout). Other cool services like audio and video-on-demand are also
not going anywhere fast (except for pirates) due to entertainment
industry fears. See our
previous note on this. Our guess is that network security issues
will probably make the transition to wireless networks less rapid than
it could be - so this should be another major area of focus.
9/2/02 <link>
How do we create Universal broadband access and revive the Telecom
industry?
In a thought-provoking article in The New Republic, John Judis
outlines the two most significant factors impacting further growth of
the broadband (and thus telecom) industry today - namely, the lack
of significant competition at the local level causing higher prices
for broadband customers, and the lack of investment in
"last mile" upgrades to bring value added services to
consumers' homes owing to the lack of competition (and to some
extent, money).
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