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Mark LaPedus over at EETimes reported IDC’s findings on the state of the IC industry.

The bad news, expected by many, was a steep decline in IC industry revenue of 22% in 2009.  Gartner predicts revenues to fall by 20% this year.

As consumer confidence, which hit an all-time-low of 25 (1985=100) yesterday, continues to move south there is no visibility as to when people will go out there and buy mobile phones, game consoles, cars, PC, DVD’s, etc. again.

And while systems companies slow down production of their products, inventories of chips rise forcing a drop in prices due to further supply/demand pressures.  A pretty vicious circle.

However, IDC are talking about a “bottom” to the macroeconomic situation.  This is projected to be towards the end of 2009 and will lead to a recovery in 2010. 

The burden for this recovery is apparently to be carried by the US.  No surprises here, but as a European (combined population 730 million) it leaves me wondering what leaders on the other side of the Atlantic are doing.

The more we start talking about “the bottom” the more real it will become.  Consumer confidence is built upon how people feel about the future.  It’s not about “today”.  It’s an abstract concept that can be influenced.

The stimulus package will help in reality, but it will help first through psychology. 

Some are talking about the need for Obama to become “Cheerleader in Chief”.  There needs to be more “Obamas” though.  We need leaders in every different segment, those people with vision and a longer term view, to chart our way through this. 

As people understand better how this can all be turned around at the macro level they’ll better understand it at a personal level.  And this will be a step in the right direction.

Posted under industry

Over the past few months, there has been quite a bit of discussion in the blogosphere of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models and Cloud Computing technology as it relates to electronic design.  You can read some of my thoughts on this topic posted here. 

We now have an opportunity to discuss these topics face-to-face at a panel moderated by Harry Gries next week at DVCon.  Why DVCon?  Because verification could be one of the early adopter disciplines that has the potential to migrate to a SaaS/Cloud Computing model.

Here is the description and details:

Date: February 25th
Time: 6:30pm to 8:00pm (immediately after DVCon)
Place: Monterey/Carmel Rooms at the Doubletree Hotel San Jose

Format and Panelists:

The format will consist of 5 brief (< 10 minute) presentations from people involved in various aspects of SaaS and cloud computing for EDA:

• Harry Gries (Design Methodology Consultant @ the ASIC guy)
• James Colgan (CEO @ Xuropa)
• Susan Peterson (Verification IP Marketing Manager @ Cadence)
• Jeremy Ralph (CEO @ PDTi)
• Bill Alexander (VP Marketing @ Blue Pearl Software)

As soon as you scratch beneath the surface of these new models there are myriad business, legal, behavioral, and technical issues that arise.  This venue promises to be an excellent opportunity to bring questions and concerns to the table for a lively discussion.

Look forward to seeing you there!

Posted under industry

The internet used to thought of as “cyberspace”.  Being online simply meant being an anonymous consumer of information.  But that was then!  The internet of today is identity-centric and social.  Internet users create blogs, upload their information to social networking sites, share ideas and contents, and they do it from their computers, iPhones, cellphones, etc.  This is what I refer to as “worldwide web” moving to “social web”.

There is a generational element to this as well: Web 2.0 (i.e. social web) is still hard to fathom for some baby boomers, but at the same time, there are larger and larger groups of baby boomers starting to post photos, opinions, etc. on the Facebook, for example.  They’re beginning to see how social the internet can be.

People in (or using) Web 2.0 have already internalized what doesn’t yet seem as a business practice by others.  Unfortunately maturing industries like EDA and semiconductor look at Web 2.0 as “social”, and hence constantly raise the question “why do we want to socialize with our customers” or “why would our customers socialize amongst themselves?” — They take the word “social” quite literally.

It’s not necessarily common business wisdom to bring customer experience into aggregators (such as Digg, Yelp, Ning, Xuropa, evenFacebook, etc.).  With these aggregators, even though things happen far away from a company’s destination site, it’s the engine of social discovery that generates astronomically more awareness than the destination site would ever create, and yes, it also generates huge volumes of traffic to the company’s destination site.

A simple example: Netflix opened up their database through an API last October.  Through this API other companies (e.g. aggregators) can access titles, ratings, queues, etc. information from Netflix. By “socializing” the Netflix experience, Netflix now gets 20+M film ratings every single day.  Does it really doesn’t matter where (which website) these titles are rated?!  It all benefits Netflix.

It’s time for EDA and semiconductor companies to see how they can benefit from Business 2.0.  EDA and semiconductor technology is the most advanced ones and those industries solve the most difficult challenges on the technical side.  Yet, they have totally missed the boat on what other industries have already accepted as common business wisdom.  They need to “socialize” their user-experience, create awareness, and turn that into revenue.

Posted under Xuropa, business, career, industry, marketing