A Booming 2010 For Semis, But 2011 Weaker?

According to iSuppli, semiconductor revenue in 2010 is believed to have achieved record growth of 32.5% to $304 billion, courtesy of a boom in DRAM and NAND sales. NAND flash has received a major boost from demand from the smartphone and tablet markets. Another new trend that could drive up demand is laptops based on

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Adobe and Apple: Kiss And Make Up?

The year 2010 has been eventful for Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE). It released its flagship software Creative Suite 5, the momentum of which led to its crossing the $1 billion milestone in quarterly revenue. But it was also a year with controversy surrounding Adobe’s Flash Player 10.1 for smartphones. Let’s take a closer look.

Tessera And InterDigital Bring In Some Cheer

Tessera (NASDAQ:TSRA), which licenses its miniaturization technology to various mobile device vendors and has annual revenue of $299.4 million, last week achieved a major victory in its chip patent dispute with Qualcomm, Spansion, ATI, and STMicroelectronics. Another IP licensing company, InterDigital (NASDAQ:IDCC) recently announced the approval of its initial dividend policy. Let’s take a closer

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Online Real Estate Sector Update

The U.S. housing market is still struggling despite the lowest mortgage interest rates in nearly 60 years, with average 30-year fixed rate loan interests bottoming at 4.21% in October. But while the interest rates have eased, credit norms have become tougher. During the third quarter, 13% of bank loan officers surveyed by the Federal Reserve reported that

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Blue Nile, WebMD Seeing Success With Mobile Apps

According to Forrester, online retail sales in the United States will increase 16% over the year to $52 billion this holiday season. In a survey of 4,700 U.S. online consumers surveyed for the report, 37%said they expect to make holiday purchases on the Web this year, compared with 30% in 2009. Mobile phones are also

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Oracle’s Shopping List

Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) reported strong results last week driven by its Sun acquisition. With the acquisition, Oracle is competing aggressively against HP and IBM in addition to its age-old rivalry with SAP. Let’s take a closer look.

RIM’s International Footprint Widening

Research in Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ:RIMM) last week reported strong third quarter results that beat all estimates. On the other hand, research firms and analysts have been reporting on dismal performance of its BlackBerry phones compared to that of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones. Let’s dig deeper.

Governments Meddling In Microfinance

Earlier last week, the Andhra Pradesh state government passed a bill restricting the interest rates and debt collection methods followed by the microfinance industry. To control collection measures, the bill restricts recovery agents to collecting debts only at the district government office. The bill also restricts the frequency of debt collection to once a month

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