There are more reports out this week that Apple Inc. is moving away from using Samsung chips in its products. All of the reports cite the ongoing Apple-Samsung patent battle as the root of the problem. Apple, says one report, doesn't want to use its competitor's technology in its products. Really? Then what about displays?…
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I am this week attending a conference in Stuttgart, Germany, on — wait for this — manufacturing. The World Manufacturing Forum, as the name suggests, is an international event, but the organizers aren't shy at all about one of its key goals, which is to actively promote and encourage a manufacturing industry in the heart…
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Electronics distributors serve several masters. In addition to the all-important OEM and EMS customers, distributors represent hundreds of component suppliers in the marketplace, and publicly traded companies answer to their shareholders. Keeping their constituents happy all the time is a feat most distributors are still trying to achieve. Electronics distributors' ongoing expansion, largely through merger…
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Way back before there was software for generating requests for quotes (RFQs), there were blank ledger forms. These multiple row and columnar pages in a paper binding could be used for almost anything from inventory records to purchasing logs. Filling them out was very time consuming, but it was the only option for early buyers.…
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Electronics and IT companies made a strong showing in the Wall Street Journal's third annual list of top venture capital-backed companies, published in September. By dominating the top of the list and taking 28 of the 50 spots, electronics and IT beat out other categories that had gained prominence in recent years, including Internet and…
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The PC market was shaken up this week as a leading researcher named {complink 9284|Lenovo Group Ltd.} the world's top PC maker. It's a big deal, but it's not entirely surprising in light of Hewlett-Packard's inability to right itself. (See: Saving a ‘Fundamentally Flawed’ Business.) Gartner reported that Lenovo had a 15.7 percent share of…
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Two weeks ago, Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill to allow driverless, autonomous cars on California roads by 2015. {complink 2294|Google} has logged hundreds of thousands of driverless miles using modified Prius hybrids. My mental gears started mashing as I began to think in terms of what this could mean for the supply chain and…
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Our industry supply chain challenge is often described as the irreconcilable differences between a very erratic demand pattern and a very rigid supply side. Customers want product in days even though their forecasts aren't always accurate. They are also willing to accept orders that can be difficult to fulfill. On the other side, component manufacturers,…
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Investment in renewable energy technology is supposed to solve everything from high unemployment rates to global warming. In the US, candidates are battling over who is the “greenest” presidential contender, and unrest in the Middle East has fossil-fuel consumers constantly on edge. But the region that stepped up alternative-energy investments the most in 2011 was…
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Now that Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has issued a challenge to public and private sector leaders to collaborate on efforts to make the use of mobile health (mHealth) technology a routine medical best-practice within five years, companies like Qualcomm, Intel, and Apple, as well as smaller firms like Fitbit Inc., and…
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