Word: microsoft
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Murdoch has several factors in his favor, beyond possibly friendly management at Hughes. With two deep-pocketed backers behind him, Microsoft and Liberty Cable's John Malone, Murdoch could hand over as much as $7 billion in cash. In mergers and acquisitions, cash is king. (Ergen has said he would consider adding some cash.) Most significant, there's considerable skepticism in the industry that antitrust regulators would let Ergen combine the nation's two largest satellite companies...
...first week of September, Microsoft officials will watch proudly as the first batch of Xbox game machines begins rolling off seven 280-ft.-long assembly lines at a new industrial park outside Guadalajara, Mexico. There may not be any Frisbees flying around, but the 124 landscaped acres could be any Microsoft campus back in Washington State. There is a screening room larger than the local movie theater and a cafeteria that includes a steak grill and a sushi bar (lunch price: $3)--all crowned by a glass-and-stone headquarters. Inside Building 12, engineers are working to make sure that...
...real beauty of the Guadalajara plant--and the Xbox facility in Zalaegerszeg, Hungary--is that they are not owned by Microsoft. The Xbox is being made by Flextronics, a company that few consumers have heard of but that computer and telecommunications-equipment makers are eager to do business with. Indeed, near Building 12 are 16 production lines for Cisco Systems digital network routers. Other buildings produce Palm Pilots and DirecTV set-top boxes...
This industry is nobody's new new thing. For several years it has done for companies such as Microsoft what basic contract manufacturers did for such old-economy companies as Nike and Sara Lee--relieved them of the gritty business of making things so they could focus on product development, marketing and brand building. What is stunning is that the EMS industry is booming even amid the smoking ruin of today's tech economy. As they acquire their smaller competitors and buy more of their customers' factories--at fire-sale prices--big players like Flextronics and Sanmina stand to emerge...
...routers for Cisco and wireless base stations for Ericsson, are based in places like Silicon Valley and Sweden, where top talent is available. Its most labor-intensive operations are still in China, where Flextronics mostly makes comparatively simple electronic products, from PC parts for Dell and mouse assemblies for Microsoft to cell phones for Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson...