THE BIG IDEA

Changing business models and emerging technology/market segments that could impact your business

Rambus Claims an Edge

Rambus says its MicroLens patterning technology, illustrated here, enables better light distribution and control—along with higher efficiency—than rivals’ approaches for LED backlighting of LCD TVs and for LED-based environmental lighting.

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If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join Rambus

Rambus, widely known for its hardball legal tactics in the memory chip business, may turn out to be a godsend for inventors armed with big ideas but few resources to protect their intellectual property and advance their creations for broad market adoption.

EET ON THE QT

A lively roundup of what we've heard on the street and what it means for you

India Sanguine on Medtech Prospects

Who Will Pay for Free Software?

Appliances Wise Up at CES

Gearing Up for Hybrid Home Nets

Going Vertical in the Data Center

China Drives Interconnect to New Heights

Tesla CTO in the Driver’s Seat

Reengineering the Patent Office

Blueprint for a Smart Grid

Look East, Young Engineer

The Droid Man

Edging the Humble Bulb into the Digital Age

TV Enters The Third Dimension

Cupertino’s Mystery Mobile EEs

Processor Guru Rethinks Multicore

LAY OF THE LAND

Surveying the landscape of both critical and non-traditional industry segments

Medtech's Bellyache

Too bad the medical electronics industry can’t cure the uncertainty that ails it. Staff and procedural changes at the FDA have the medtech sector’s collective gut in a twist. As the butterflies spread, VC funds that had already shown a delicate stomach for medtech investment are further souring on the industry.

VC WATCH

Tracking the hottest industry startups and gauging their chances for success

Portuguese Startup Pursues Power IP Sans VC

SiliconGate, a two-year-old startup in Porto, Portugal, specializes in designing and licensing power conversion and management cores. It has ties to Chipidea Microelectronics, the successful analog and mixed-signal IP startup that was sold to MIPS Technologies in 2007 for about $150 million.

MARKET DATA

Crunching the numbers and discerning trends on varied segments of the global electronics industry

China Flexing Its Muscles in BioMEMS Market

Microsystems demand in health care applications could triple in the next five years, to $4.5 billion. As the landscape for the supply chain and industry players takes shape, we foresee a much bigger role for China.

COMPANY TEARDOWN

We identify and dissect the up-and-comers, the established firms hitting their stride, and the companies in crisis

MediaTek Feels the Heat, Seeks a Comeback

Taiwanese fabless chip vendor MediaTek defied gravity during last year’s recession, growing by more than 20 percent in a year when the wider semiconductor industry declined by roughly 10 percent. But 2010 has been a different story: The wireless chip vendor that some have called the Qualcomm of Asia is believed to have returned to more modest, 6 to 8 percent growth, compared with estimates of a stellar 30 percent for the chip sector at large.