The Consumer Electronics Association CEO says consumer electronics industry executives continue to work toward selling the ‘experience’ rather than simply …
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Product Design, Development
Gary Shapiro on consumer electronics trends and the CEA
China’s risk: Bubbles burst, that’s what they do
Combined, all of these issues, and many others are becoming fault lines in the foundation that has allowed China to recover from the economic …
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Trends reveal test engineering challenges to balance timelines and budgets
Test engineers in industries ranging from aerospace and defense to consumer electronics face complicated testing. One issue facing engineers is that test instrumentation is not updated as rapidly as the devices being tested. Functionality of these complex devices is being defined by the software embedded in them, such as…
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Acquisition gives Flextronics expanded global footing and capabilities
Until recently, Flextronics’ largest market segment was mobile phones, which accounted for over 30% of revenue. With the acquisition of Solectron this changes the entire landscape of the EMS, and ODM, industries.
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Foreign IP strategy for electronics manufacturing
Know where your competitors are filing IP. Companies may consider filing patents in foreign jurisdictions where competitors are active, in an effort to gain market space and / or leverage IP assets during future negotiations. Manufacturers in emerging jurisdictions such as Brazil, India, China, and Vietnam become more active in presenting opportunities for joint manufacturing ventures …
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12 Questions for the Occam Process before buying the farm
The Occam Process is touted to be environmentally compliant or, friendly. However, the process uses photolithography and copper plating procedures. Aren’t these processes quite ‘dirty’? Won’t these processes, which will be new to most potential adopters, be a challenge to implement?
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Taking the pulse of EMS
While internal, defensive, cost-control issues dominated the companies’ reports; most firms also …
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Cost analysis and the teardown
I am skeptical about the accuracy of cost analysis teardowns. Normally, list prices for components (the figure used in the analysis report) are …
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Design guru John Maeda on Apple’s love potion and product design
In this popular interview Dr. Maeda isolates the source behind Apple’s iPhone success; discusses product design for manufacturing (DfM) and end-user usability, and more.
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Lower intellectual property (IP) risk outsourcing electronics manufacturing
One common error is most executives feel something is not patentable. It is also Some advanced tactics used by IP-savvy companies and executives include conducting ‘directed invention …
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