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Gordon Moore has been quoted and misquoted over the decades, although Bill Gates' “640K (sic) of memory should be enough for anybody” alleged quotation in 1981 is more remembered, even if he didn’t, as he claims, really say it. Most often Moore’s Law is misquoted as being that processing power (whatever that is supposed to be defined as) will double every two years whereas what was actually written in the April 19, 1965 issue of Electronics Magazine was, “The number of transistors incorporated in a chip will approximately double every 24 months.”  That was not a prophecy of where integration was going and there was no suggestion that the doubling process would be monolithic. It was much more of a business statement as to how the processor industry would grow over time and that somehow solutions would continue to be found to prove his thinking valid. We are, fortunately, a little more isolated from this Law in the analog arena, as the finer geometries that are required...

Just this week the price of a share in Apple surpassed, for some while, the extraordinary boundary level of $500. At the same time it faced problems in the manufacturing chain with Proview International Holdings (Taiwan and Hong Kong) continuing their legal push for the rights to the iPad name in China, and the apparently welcome inspection by the Fair Labor Association (FLA) of the FoxConn factories in the Peoples’ Republic. The Proview dispute is one that Apple should have ended a long time ago but their seeming arrogance – or disbelief that the iPad would sell in China – led them to settle over use of the name everywhere else. Now things have escalated to the point that shipments of the iPad 3 (rumored for early in March 2012) are being threatened with customs actions. You would think that the cost of legal arguments and the potential harm to supply would have already forced Apple to settle for what is a trivial sum to them. The FoxConn investigation is a big ball of wax. We should reme...

This time of year is when I travel to Silicon Valley – and often onwards – for the enjoyable task of presenting EN-Genius Product of the Year Awards. Last week was such a trip and one of the common themes that I was asked about was the financial state of our business, as I see it. I have no crystal ball, of course, but some of my observations might be of interest – if not of value. It’s a hard question this year. Technology itself is racing ahead but that does not sell product. Many of the developments are, however, as a direct result of market demand, so there is at least one customer for each forward step. From what I have been allowed to see of roadmaps for the next twelve to eighteen months ahead there is not going to be any slowdown in progress. There are two very different business stories out there. From the senior executives there is great optimism for 2012: business is moving ahead and economic conditions look favorable. Talking to those who are on the streets trying to mark...