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National Semiconductor pioneered the audio subsystem category for mobile phones and other portable ...
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Yes, it is all about ROI, which management will understand. Jasper’s approach to formal verification ...
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I would think with that kind of processing power it would be quite useful for vision and machine ...
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Requiring everyone to wear glasses is a non-starter, even if the manufacturers could standardize on ...
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Duane Benson  07.29.2010
You can join the ARTEMIS robots band
What we really need in terms of robot instrument players is a robot that can play the vuvuzela horn. ...
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It seems that mobile industries is waiting for a High Memory Crunching Application, that will create ...
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It is indeed a great tie up, Docomo will be surely able to comeup with a very good plan and ...
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R_Colin_Johnson  07.29.2010
MEMS startup aims picoprojectors at 3-D modeling
Right On! Yes, "oligic" you are right. I contacted Seikowave and they confirmed to me that they "are ...
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It seems that the PLCs will now become embeddes systems, although the artical is discussing about ...
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@Pubs : The government has not mandated our use of the internet, only funded the development. The ...
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There is a FPGA company called Siliconblue Technologies that is relatively new and hopefully doing ...
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This is an interesting topic, and it would be good to hear from Mr. Atwood. Perhaps he has reasons ...
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Fig 2 looks like a capacitive load, not inductive. Am I missing something here?
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drobesk  07.29.2010
EDA startup Sigasi raises funds
Sigasi, in their belief that they have added "intelligence" to their Integrated Development ...
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We must be careful when we analyze the latest sales figures reported by chip makers at this time of ...
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Kiran_NSN  07.29.2010
ASMI buys Siemens' SMT business
Big companies shedding off their weight or workforce. It has become common scene among the big ...
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ahshabazz  07.29.2010
Smart Phone + Car = Stupid?
@Dave.Kleidermacher by mentioning the make and model you are allowing disingenuous defense lawyers ...
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It was recently reported that customers could legally jail break their iPhones ( essentially voiding ...
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Excellent Tutorial and very nice Guidelines for Designers using DDRx Memories
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There are some excellent WDR solutions that don't use FPGAs. For example, the Pixim solution uses an ...
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Design Compiler is one product, which never had a really good competition. Have been using DC for 8 ...
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I know such a feeling, taking a customer request and identify their problem with a suggested ...
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Niel_M  07.28.2010
Why engineers don't like Twitter
True very true..
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Technically 8-bit micros were and are upgrading equally as 32-bit... From my personal opinion, I see ...
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I can not see the future, because I don’t have a magic crystal ball. I can guess, however, what it ...
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Reader Message Boards

NXP's $700 million IPO is over-priced

By Tunrayo on 07.26.2010

Referring to Peter Clarke's article on NXP's IPO on the 23rd of July - In my opinion, I don't think the NXP IPO is a good buy at the $18 to $21 offer price - it is simply too expensive. NXP is just simply trying to restructure its capital - i.e getting rid of loans by converting debt to shareholders equity.

But here is really what they are offering investors: NXP currently has about 243 million shares and they plan to sell 14% of this stake (34 million shares) for between $18 to $21. Now, the value of their equity is currently about $820 million (Q1 2010). This means the book value or worth of each NXP share at the moment is $3.37. Now, why would I even pay $18 for the same share?! NXP should be offerring a greater share of the company for this price, or they should drop the IPO price further, to attract investors.

Furthermore, NXP has a debt of about $4 billion which is due in about 4 years. The interest expense of about $300 million annually has made it very difficult for NXP to record profits in the past 2 years or so. So NXP must come up with $4 billion very soon or rollover the loan and continue paying interests of about $300 million every year. This is where the over-priced IPO comes in - NXP wants investors to come up with $700 million which they can use to pay off part of this debt. I certainly don't want to be doing that!

In addition, even if NXP could restructure their capital entirely with shareholders' equity, (i.e. raise about $4 billion from an IPO to cancel off the debts and thus save $300 million every year) they still would not be able to record a profit. This because of the huge sums they expend on operations. Cost of operations for Q1 2010 was $428 million - this also happened to be the figure for Gross Profit - so, no money was made in that period, not to mention the obligation to pay interest on outstanding loans. In fact, huge losses were made in other financial periods.

Overall although NXP has impressive Gross Margins (about 20%), the cost of operations severely weighs down the company's earnings. Thus, it is probably a poorly run company with an inefficient organizational structure and poor business strategies, but they certainly have good products to be recording the kind of sales shown in their books. However, I definitely do not want to be the investor to pay huge sums for their shares and hope the company performance improves.

Just to give another example, supposing they were miraculoulsy able to record $100 million in earnings, this would put them on a Price-to-Earnings (P/E) ratio of 44 at the proposed IPO price of $18. A P/E ratio of 44 means I expect to get returns of 2.2% every year on my investment! I guess it is probably better to put my money in a savings account and be 100% sure my initial capital will not depreciate. Anyway, if I were trading on the NASDAQ, I would short NXP immediately it was listed.

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Digital Signage

By Big Bob on 07.26.2010

A new era of digital signage has begun. There are so many new companies about. One I heard about that is local to me is http://www.digitalsignage.net/ which got me wondering how many digital signage companies exsist and how good is digital signage?

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last comment   07.27.2010  toney
I would like a digitalsign that says: Obamas’ two goals: 1. A new pledge of allegiance: I pledge ...

Every night, you can't wait to go to sleep because you know you will be dreaming about the IEEE. You even have framed pictures of the IEEE's Board of Directors. You can't keep it a secret any longer. Now, here is your chance to tell the whole world, why you love the IEEE.

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last comment   07.28.2010  Rich Krajewski
For many years, it has been called the "I triple-E" for short. Some even call it the "aieee!" for ...

The unveiling of the $35 India tablet is perhaps another Bottom of Pyramid Strategy that is driven by the needs in the emerging economy, with the government initiatives to drive education technology and bring broadband connectivity to India's 25,000 colleges and 504 universities and make study materials available online.

This latest addition of the low cost innovations is such of the likes such as the Nano Compact car and the $2000 open heart surgery.

One of the benefits that this low cost tablet can leverage is the open source software ( google docs etc ) through the wi-fi and internet to create and share the contents, something which the existing tablet fall short of, in the common platform for content creation and sharing ( software ).

Besides the low cost innovations through the $35 tablet, which aim to bring accessibility of the education content, it brings another dimension of thought. Would the digital content of the study materials ( books, publications, journals, case studies etc ) be make available at low cost ( or no cost ), extending the likes of the opencourseware such MIT in the course materials to e-publications, e-journals, e-books ? Emerging economies would welcome this.


http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/201821/what_could_you_do_with_a_35_tablet.html?tk=hp_pop
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/ap/20100723/twl-as-india-supercheap-computer-3rd-ld-d8d2a8b.html

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last comment   07.28.2010  bahamas
The Bahamas Bridal Association is comprised of our country’s leading professional destination ...

With the launch of the ipad on 23rd July in singapore, it is interesting to see how the supply chain closest to the customer ( the main retailers ) shapes the demand by segmenting the releasing of the ipads in different block of time. This control of the numbers is in addition to the allocation demand from Apple to the main distributors in the region itself.

Along with this, there is predictive increase in the mobile dataplan increase, subscription contents of the web, besides the sales of the appls. The ipad has drives its complementory ( contents subscriptions, dataplan, appls )and its supply chain industry, in the specific components used.



http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/latest/story/0,4574,396478,00.html?

http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/bizit/story/0,4574,395507,00.html?

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