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With Conexant filing for Chapter 11 last week, I'm curious about who is taking the financial hit and how the supply chain will be affected.
EE Times editor Junko Yoshida wrote the tech side of the story and it's been a breathtaking fall.
According to the filing, Conexant owed $2.83 million to Eastman Kodak, and Silterra Malaysia, are owed $1.98 million.
The lesson here is that bankruptcies always have a domino effect (Kodak went Chapter 11 in January 2012), and even without that end game, the shock wave Nokia has sent through the electronics supply chain is well known.
Conexant still had $135 million in revenue in 2012, so whoever is buying those parts is now potentially in a bind. Datasheets.com shows hundreds of Conexant part numbers covering modems, codecs, Ethernet switches, and audio parts in the supply chain mainly held by Arrows' Verical division.
So…
- How healthy are your suppliers?
- Do you keep them on a financial health watch?
- Should we do it for you?
It is very important to closely monitor health of every supplier that is critical for your product. There should more importance to products if there is no second supplier is available, mainly active integrated circuits.
@elctrnx_lyf do you have a set of tools or a methodology that you recommend for best tracking such things? Something like that would be a gold mine, as the alternative is time consuming and inefficient information hunting.
That's too fast. Just about 1 year ago, I was evaluating some of Conexant CMOS sensors with their engineers.
This is 'nationalism' gone beserk. We see cases of US juries and courts awarding huge awards against foreign-owned (and 'foreigner'-founded/ managed) companies. A sure way to drive such companies out of the country; if design and-or manufacturing was being done overseas it is less likely the infringement would have been uncovered.
I don't agree. Marvell is a fabless company and certainly manufactures its chips overseas. It also does most if not all of its design overseas, as it has international design centers located in the U.S., Europe, Israel, India, Singapore and China.
Tam: Of course there are appeals etc, but at the jury-award level the cases against Samsung and now Marvell certainly DO seem 'nationlism'. I would not be surprised if similarly nationalistic decisions come out of the other countries > later arbitrated at the higher judicial levels > in the process the ONLY people who gain are the lawyers.
Cant we just be friends.