Top 10 shifts in chips, comms

SAN JOSE, Calif. – It was a tough year. When it was all over, the semiconductor industry contracted about four percent, according to market watchers who spent much of the year revising their forecasts downward.

Much of the blame belongs to Europe. Greece, Spain, Italy and Ireland took turns threatening a fiscal collapse that could pull down the European Union with it. The U.S. struggled through a sluggish recovery as it watched. Even the big bull and global growth engine of China pulled in its horns, expecting a storm.

A summary follows.


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• A down year
• The shift to the mobile cloud
• The rise of the mega data center
• Moore’s Law slows
• The winners: ARM
• MIPS on the ropes
• More winners: Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm
• Roads diverge for Wintel
• The Losers: Elpida, Nokia, AMD, Renesas, STM, TI
• The next big thing in networking: SDN