Mannerisms

Tea is the second most widely consumed drink around the world, coming in only after water and yesterday was the UN’s International Tea Day. The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN) estimates that some 6.7 million tonnes of tea were produced worldwide in 2022, with China, India, Kenya and Sri Lanka among the main tea producers in terms ...

Manchester City’s fourth consecutive Premiership title has come in the wake of 115 charges of financial irregularities and snide remarks that the club bought its success. Pep Guardiola responded that if soccer success was always just about money then “Manchester United should have won all the titles, Chelsea – all the titles, Arsenal – all the titles.” While he was ...

THE proposed amalgamation betweenRadio & Allied (Holdings),Ltd., makers of Sobell and McMichael televisions and  radio receivers, and GEC,Ltd., is another major step in process of consolidation in the industry which has been taking place over the past few years. So, 63 years ago, started a story in Electronics Weekly’s edition of March 8 1961. The story continues: Following closely on ...

Xi Jinping’s three-country Europe tour  reflects the importance to China of its European trade after suffering a big drop in its exports to the USA. Exports are key to fuelling China’s economic growth. Since its accession to the World Trade Organisation in 2001, Chinese exports of goods have grown more than tenfold, climbing from less than $300 billion in 2001 ...

Not for the first time, government interference has screwed up a market and, as always, this creates opportunities, Ed confides to his diary. The Chinese have built a fleet of  Ro-Ro ferries each of which can take 7000 EVs and are heading them towards Europe. The EU has to decide whether it’s going to let this invasion wipe out the ...

20 years ago, in his 2004 DAC keynotev, Pat Gelsinger, then Intel’s CTO, called for a new way of looking at EDA, stating that the progression of Moore’s Law would fundamentally change the tools required to design chips. “Today I want to challenge each one of you to continue in the role you play to keep Moore’s Law alive and ...

With revenues up 17% y-o-y at $27.4 billion and around 21 million PlayStation 5 consoles shipped, Sony’s gaming segment performed well in its fiscal year 2023. However the target set in April last year was for 25 million. For FY24, Sony expects a $440 million drop in gaming-related revenue due to the lack of major exclusive titles and waning interest ...

116 years ago, this gentleman co- invented this which revolutionised an industry Moral: Ideas Change Everything

Despite  chatter about a “no landing” scenario, the IMF was optimistic about major advanced economies having  a soft landing in its mid-April  World Economic Outlook. The IMF expects inflation to return to its long-term average and target level of 2%   next year G7 countries, while maintaining robust albeit comparatively slow economic growth. Global growth, estimated at 3.2% in 2023, ...

It was the dog that didn’t bark in the night that solved the Sherlock Holmes case Silver Blaze. The dog that’s not barking now is the German car industry faced with a fleet of China Ro-Ro ships each carrying 7,000 cheap Chinese EVs headed for European markets. The EU has been pondering its response to the expected Chinese EV  tsunami ...

Thanks to Omdia for this – the top 20 semiconductor companies last year:

Transportation and warehousing are going to be among the fastest growing sectors over the next decade, with wage and salary employment in the sector projected to grow 8.6%  between 2022 and 2032.According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment Projections, At 9.7%, the biggest increase in employment is expected for the healthcare and social assistance sector, which is ...

WORK is to start later this year on Britain’s new air traffic control set-up and, by 1964, the first joint Civil/Military ATC centre is due to enter service. So, 63 years ago, started a story in the Electronics Weekly’s edition of March 22, 1961. The story continues: It will be the forerunner of a number of similar centres designed meet ...

Last year, tablet shipments fell to the lowest level in more than a decade – 128 million devices compared to 161 million in 2022, says IDC.   Apple remains the undisputed market leader with close to 40 percent market share in terms of unit shipments and even more than that in terms of value. Following the original iPad’s release in ...

Now’s the time to prepare for the tsunami of cheap chips about to come from China, Ed confides to his diary. With China now spending 47% of the entire worldwide semi capex on chip infrastructure, the amount of mature technology devices hitting the world markets at give-away prices is going to be stupid. There can be little doubt, that China ...

20 years ago the chip industry was digesting a shock – for the first time in its history a new process technology node was not resulting in the automatic benefit of delivering lower power. “The industry is facing a challenge which is unprecedented,” former Hitachi Semiconductor CEO and Sony CTO, Dr Tsugio Makimoto, told the 2004 Globalpress Summit Conference in ...

This gentleman, pictured with one of his inventions, was awarded over 1000 US patents.     Moral: Perspire

The anticipated flood of cheap Chinese chips is on its way. Earlier this week, Malcolm Penn, CEO of Future Horizons, said that China’s semiconductor  capex has now reached 47.2% of the total world capex  which, said Penn, is “a serious red flag”.  China’s chip production will be up 60% in the next three years, said Penn, and doubled in five ...

Europe’s problem with the chip industry has always been sporadic investment and a lack of customers for the most advanced chips. The 1980s programmes JESSi and MEDEA gave Europe leading edge capability – Philips mass-manufactured SRAMs, Infineon made DRAMs and ST sold flash –  but a subsequent generation of CEOs let that lapse. 10 years ago, EC vp Neelie Kroes ...

Thanks to Our World In Data for this one – the 22 countries taking the most anti-depressants: