'Computers / Technology' Archive
News item: Apple and AT&T sold more than 1 million new iPhones in the first weekend of availability for the iPhone 3GS.
Yes, if it’s midyear, there must be a new iPhone model to drive Apple fans crazy and make them rush to hand over their cash for the latest gadget (priced at $199 or $299, depending on memory capacity). This being the third straight year of the iPhone phenomenon, the iPhone 3GS rush wasn’t as frenzied as those seen in the past two years. Standing in line for a week? That’s so 2007.
Just as the iPhone craze is settling down, the popular wireless handset is getting some serious competition, as the smartphone market defies the downturn in consumer electronics sales.
In the past two years, Apple sold more than 21 million iPhones. Throw in the iPod touch, which does nearly everything the iPhone does except make calls, and Apple’s moved 37 million mobile devices.
Every other manufacturer of wireless handsets says they have an “iPhone killer,” yet the iPhone shows no signs of becoming a zombie product. It’s more fitting to discuss iPhone challengers, as not everyone can afford an iPhone, and not everyone wants one.
The hot new challenger is the Pre smartphone made by Palm, exclusively available from Sprint. It’s about $200, so it’s comparably priced with the lower-end iPhone 3GS.
Apple’s strongest competitor in the smartphone segment remains Research In Motion with its BlackBerry models. The BlackBerry Storm is the latest and greatest in the line; it’s selling for about $150.
The G1, the “Google phone,” is a strong seller for T-Mobile. Made by HTC and running Google’s Android mobile device software, the G1 is the vanguard of Android-based products and also is priced at $150. T-Mobile is about to launch its second Google phone made by HTC, called the myTouch, which will sell for $199 (that seems to be a popular pricepoint in this market!).
Nokia, the world’s largest maker of wireless handsets, isn’t ceding the smartphone market to Apple and RIM, rolling out its N97 touchscreen phone this month. It’s priced around $699, making it the most expensive model out there at the moment.
What makes or breaks a new smartphone are the applications available, and Apple’s still the champ there. The App Store has more than 50,000 software programs for the iPhone and iPod touch, many of them free, and the total apps available seems to grow exponentially for the Apple mobile devices.
There were an estimated 139 million smartphones sold in 2008, despite a raging recession around the world, and market researchers see that number doubling in 2010 as more people regard the gadgets as not just convenient but necessary for keeping up with e-mail, surfing the Web, finding restaurants and other businesses, and so many other chores. Plus chatting on the phone, of course.
Many momentous events took place in 1959. Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and their communist guerrilla forces took over Cuba. A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway. The Dalai Lama fled Tibet and went into exile in India. Khrushchev and Nixon had their “kitchen debate” in Moscow. The St. Lawrence Seaway was opened. Miles Davis released Kind of Blue.
In the world of business, Honda Motor opened its first overseas subsidiary, American Honda Motor, in a Los Angeles storefront. Hitachi established Hitachi America. And National Semiconductor was born.
National Semiconductor makes its headquarters in Silicon Valley, of course, but the company was started in Danbury, Connecticut, on May 27, 1959, and incorporated in Delaware. It was less than a year after the integrated circuit (IC) was invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments, and not long after Fairchild Semiconductor’s Robert Noyce came up with an IC design that was easier to manufacture than Kilby’s design.
National Semi moved its headquarters from Connecticut to Santa Clara, California, in 1967, before Intel or Advanced Micro Devices were established, and about the time people started talking about the Santa Clara Valley, “the Valley of Heart’s Delight” that was covered with fruit orchards (Orchard Supply Hardware got its start there in 1931, and still makes its headquarters in San Jose), as this “Silicon Valley,” filled with companies making semiconductors on silicon wafers.
National’s been around for 50 years, but it’s not half as well known as AMD, Fairchild, or Intel. In fact, it bought Fairchild from Schlumberger in 1987, and then spun off the venerable chip company a decade later. National became famous in the industry for churning out low-cost logic devices, analog chips, and transistors. The company became infamous for a long-standing practice of reverse-engineering its competitors’ devices (an entirely legal yet costly and time-consuming way of designing ICs).
National pioneered many industry firsts in semiconductor products, yet it never really launched a home-run chip, like Intel did with the microprocessor, TI did with the digital signal processor, and ZiLOG did with the microcontroller. It was content to make huge volumes of microchips for its customers and never saw the need for a “National Inside” marketing campaign. National now is pinning hopes on its SolarMagic line of power management devices.
The company is noted for some long tenures among its CEOs. Charles (Charlie) Sporck led National for 25 years, from 1966 to 1991; he helped establish the SEMATECH research consortium. The incumbent CEO, Brian Halla, has held the job for 13 years, which is close to a lifetime appointment in hard-charging Silicon Valley.
Happy 50th, National Semiconductor Corporation! Here’s to 50 more.
The reputation of banks as stoic and sturdy institutions charged with the safe keeping of our money has been tarnished during the past couple of years. So why not embrace that tarnish and throw in some rusty hubcaps, gun racks, and mullets?
Enter The Redneck Bank. At first glance at the bank’s Website you assume it has to be some sort of joke. The bank’s motto, “Where bankin’s funner” lets you know right away that this place is just a little different. You log in to your account by clicking on an outhouse icon and the bank’s mascot, a neighing horse complete with big buck teeth, declares, “yessiree…member FDIC!”
Redneck Bank is in fact the Internet banking division of Bank of the Wichitas — a small institution with a hand full of branches in (wait for it) Oklahoma.
The company launched Redneck Bank in 2007 and just figured, “let’s inject a little fun into the seriousness of the banking business.” But the bank has received new attention in light of all of the drama within the banking biz. Redneck Bank is just an example of several financial institutions that are trying to reinvent themselves in order to draw in customers who are looking for a little something different these days.
Many of these “new” banks boast their small size, customer service, or unconventional name or policies (yep, there is even Tightwad Bank). Redneck Bank touts “good old-fashioned service” and offers run-of-the-mill services like online bill pay, checks and even a special Redneck VISA check card, which I’m sure can be used to impress your friends out at the NASCAR track.
When I decided to give Redneck Bank a holler the other day a very friendly “non-redneck” sounding fellow named Scott answered my call on the second ring. He informed me that it would only take a deposit of $1 to start an account. And when I asked him if they had been receiving a lot of phone calls about starting new accounts he said, “we always get lots of calls.”
Maybe in order to run a successful bank these days you don’t need fancy commercials, a gazillion branches and ATMs on every corner. You just need a solid, simple idea … maybe a little too simple.
The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) Friday released its mid-year forecast. We’ve gone way beyond “glass half full or half empty” assessments of industry conditions. It’s more like, “Is there still a glass? May we have some water?”
The industry trade group predicts worldwide semiconductor sales will hit $195.6 billion in 2009, a drop of more than 21% from 2008. The industry hasn’t seen sales this low since 2004, when chip companies were finally climbing out of the dot-com/telecom bust.
Semiconductor sales are chiefly driven by computers, mobile devices (cell phones and such), and other consumer electronics. Sales of those products are severely depressed by the global recession, although there are some bright spots, especially in netbooks, smartbooks, or whatever you want to call these small computers that can access the Internet.
To a lesser extent, microchips go into automotive electronics, industrial/military products, and wireline communications. We all know how badly the automotive industry is doing, so there’s not much hope there.
The SIA now is forecasting that semiconductor sales will rebound next year, growing 6.5% in 2010 and another 6.5% the following year. Still, that would bring worldwide sales to nearly $222 billion in 2011, or about where they were in 2005. (Industry sales peaked in 2007, at around $250 billion, per the SIA’s statistics.)
In short: Conditions seem to be at or near the bottom for the semiconductor industry. Growth is on the horizon, but it’s going to be a long climb back to previous prosperity. Unless there’s a big boom in sales next year! That just may happen.
Bing.
Bing?
Bing!
Q: What’s Bing?
A: The new Microsoft search engine. (Bing bing bing!)
Yes, that’s right. What was MSN Search became Live Search, and now Live Search is being rebranded as Bing. As in the cherries and Crosby. It’s Microsoft’s latest run at Google, the search champ.
The software giant unveiled the brand identity this week. The site isn’t quite live yet, so you’ll still have to resort to using Live Search if you don’t want to use Google, Yahoo!, or any other search engine.
Meanwhile, the “G” company that is not Gatorade rolled out Google Wave, a Web-based tool for collaboration and communication. It’s also not quite live, but it’s coming later this year, Google promises.
Bing. Bing Bing. Bing Bing Bing! Bing.