Replies to post #1 on Texas Instruments Inc (TXN)

[Eric]

Welcome Slacker and mschere

Slacker,

<< thanks for starting the board. >>

You're welcome. Thanks to you and mschere for checking in with contributions.

<< I've never followed TI as closely as I should have and that has likely made me miss both buying and selling opportunities. >>

I've followed it rather passively until about 6 months ago. I took my first starter position at $18.90 a few weeks back. I figured taking a position would get me more involved.

My wireless basket now consists of QCOM, NOK, TXN, and ARMHY in descending order of their value in that basket.

<< Most of the focus on TI has been in the wireless space but lately their efforts into DLP have been getting attention. Still less than 10% of total revenues but growing fast.... >>

Yes. I've pretty much followed it from the wireless IC perspective, but they are nicely diversified as is ARMHY, as opposed to QCOM and NOK which are close to wireless pure plays.

If I have time, I'll probably hunt up some links on TI from posts I and others have made elsewhere in the last 6 months, to get this board kicked off.

Best,

- Eric -

[Eric]

TI puts H.264 Codec on Mobile Chips

Meeting the needs of a marketplace that is rapidly migrating to digital media technology, WWComs, Inc. today announced the launch of its new H.264 Baseline Profile codec (BC-264), which delivers simultaneous encoding and decoding while consuming less than 50 percent of the processing power on a single TI TMS320DM642 DSP-based digital media processor

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040823/nym045_1.html

From Mobile Tracker:

Texas Instruments has announced a new Digital Signal Processor (DSP) that encodes and decodes H.264 video (also known as MPEG-4 Part 10) in real time. While most consumers do not yet no what H.264 is, Apple Computer is trying to change that:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/h264.html

H.264 video files have small sizes but impressive quality. Everything from 3G content to full HD can be accomplished with H.264. No time table was given for when we might see these chips in the mobile devices they were designed for.

- Eric -

[Eric]

TI's HDTV Microdisplay Competitors

<< TI has been in the wireless space but lately their efforts into DLP have been getting attention. Still less than 10% of total revenues but growing fast.... >>

As many as four startups are quietly developing versions of micromirror displays in response to Texas Instruments Inc.'s early success with the technology it pioneered.

Startups designing alternatives to TI's DLP technology for front/rear-projection displays:

* Miradia Inc. (Santa Clara, CA)
* Reflectivity Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA)
* Two other startups still in stealth mode

TI has now shipped more than 3 million DLP chips. To accommodate future growth, TI signed up South Korea's Dongbu Anam Semiconductor earlier this year to make the chips in addition to TI's own fabs in Dallas and Miho, Japan.

>> Four Startups Gunning for TI's Microdisplay Business

Rick Merritt
Los Angeles
EE Times
August 26, 2004

http://www.eet.com/sys/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=35300003

As many as four startups are quietly developing versions of micromirror displays in response to Texas Instruments Inc.'s early success with the technology it pioneered.

Separately Toshiba will announce in October plans to make the proprietary surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED) a linchpin of its high-end TV portfolio.

The news emerged at the HDTV Forum 2004 here where engineers said they foresee significant growth for microdisplay-based TVs of all sorts. But they also aired a laundry list of problems bringing digital and high definition TV profitably to the mainstream.

Miradia Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) and Reflectivity Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) are designing alternatives to TI's Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology for a host of front- and rear-projection displays. As many as two other startups still in stealth mode are also pursuing the use of tiny mirrors built in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) to attack TI's growing business in high-end TVs and business projectors.

"Like most of the [consumer electronics] industry, this is a very competitive market," said Greg Miller who left a job heading a division of JDS Uniphase in April to become chief executive of Miradia.

The 25-person startup will deliver XGA and 720-line progressive microdisplays starting in mid-2005 with 1080p devices coming later. The chips will be made on single-crystal silicon using a standard CMOS process at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., which invested in the startup's recent $22 million B series round led by Sequoia Capital.

Miller claims Miradia's manufacturing process leverages several cost efficiencies that would allow it to undercut TI's DLP prices, though he would not be specific on the process or price.

Miradia was founded in January by Harvard University physics professor Dongmin Chen, Stanford University physics professor Shoucheng Zhang and Jay Chen, a senior manager from Applied Materials. The trio met every Sunday for most of 2002 developing their concepts, Miller said.

A spokesman for Reflectivity said only that the company is in advanced development of its micromirror products. The company's Web site says it was founded in 1998 and has shown working prototypes.

Industry insiders were split over the startups' likely impact.

Bill Burnett, president of TV design house D2M (Mountain View, Calif.), said he has analyzed some of the new DLP competitors under nondisclosure agreements and found them to have "significant technology in MEMS." He predicted the competition in the DLP market will heat up with startups undercutting TI's prices starting next year, and TI fiercely defending its intellectual property and market position.

"People aren't just going to leave this market to TI with all the growth coming, but this could get ugly," he said.

Chris Chinnock, president of market watcher Insight Media (Norwalk, Conn.), took a more skeptical view. He had not been briefed by any of the startups yet.

"Until they show something working, they are just in the noise. There are no significant competitors in the MEMS-based displays as far as I know," he said.

Chinnock noted that another stealth microdisplay startup, Steridian (Vancouver Wash.), claims it will sell a 1080p transmissive microdisplay for as little as $500. Backers claim the display leverages existing optics and display infrastructure, has high brightness and a 100-percent aperture ratio so that the display is not subject to pixelization.

Insight Media forecasts unit shipments of microdisplay TVs will grow at a 63 percent compound annual rate through 2008, representing three-quarters of the 7.1 million rear-projection TVs shipped during that year.

Emerging startups "won't change my strategy," said John Reder, manager of TI's tabletop TV business unit in TI's DLP group.

TI has now shipped more than 3 million DLP chips. To accommodate future growth, TI signed up South Korea's Dongbu Anam Semiconductor earlier this year to make the chips in addition to TI's own fabs in Dallas and Miho, Japan.

Separately a Toshiba executive said here the company will announce at CEATEC Japan in October product plans for its proprietary SED technology, codeveloped with Canon. SED displays will form the high-end of Toshiba's TV line with best-in-class resolution, contrast ratio and response time said Scott Ramirez, vice president of marketing for Toshiba America Consumer Products (Wayne, N.J.), though he declined to provide product details.

"This technology is better than plasma or LCDs for large screens," Ramirez claimed. <<

- Eric -