Word: silicon
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When executives do venture into new fields through mergers, they are now more likely to adopt a hands-off policy toward the acquired companies. IBM last year completed the $1.9 billion purchase of Rolm Corp., a Silicon Valley maker of telecommunications equipment. The button-down computer giant has since left its freewheeling subsidiary largely alone. "We didn't come here to fill up the swimming pool with gravel," an IBM official assured Rolm employees, who have happily retained their corporate hot tubs, saunas and water-polo team. General Motors has vowed to pursue a similar strategy with Hughes Aircraft, which...
While the semiconductor slump is centered in Silicon Valley, the industry's hub, it extends well beyond that California region. United Technologies said last month that it was permanently closing its Mostek subsidiary in suburban Dallas and laying off 2,500 workers in Texas and 3,200 worldwide. The decision followed more than a year of intense and often agonizing cost cutting. Said Marie Gentilo, 45, a Mostek quality-control worker: "There is nothing for us. Some of us are too old to get new jobs...
...companies have been mounting legal efforts to strike back. Three Silicon Valley firms, Intel, National Semiconductor and Advanced Micro Devices, complained to the Government in September that their Japanese rivals are selling certain types of chips in the U.S. at artificially low prices. Last week the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled that the Commerce Department should open a probe of the matter. The U.S. manufacturers want a fair shake in the Japanese market as well. The Semiconductor Industry Association formally complained to the U.S. Trade Representative last June that Japan was blocking access to its markets. Japanese companies deny both...
When rising Third World incomes meet the shrinking cost of technology, multinationals are betting that markets will bloom. In October Silicon Valley's Advanced Micro Devices introduced a $185 Personal Internet Communicator--a basic computer--for developing countries, while Taiwan-based VIA Technologies plans to launch a similar device costing just $100. Motorola last month unveiled a no-frills cell phone priced at $40; the cell-phone manufacturer says it expects to sell 6 million cell phones in six months in markets including China, India and Turkey. "You've got nearly 2 billion people who will be buying a phone...
...largest growth industry" in espionage, says Edward O'Malley, an FBI assistant director in charge of the intelligence division. Some recent examples: a Northrop engineer pleaded guilty in March to attempting to transmit Stealth technology to the Soviets for $55,000; the husband of a worker at a Silicon Valley defense firm used his wife's access to sell high-tech documents on ballistic-missile research to Polish intelligence for some $250,000; and in a trial that began last Friday in Los Angeles, Svetlana and Nikolai Ogorodnikov, two Soviet émigrés, are accused of attempting to buy secrets...