British Startup Claims Record Efficiency In Simple Solar Cell

July 3, 2009

A spin-off from the Imperial College London claims to have produced the world’s most efficient simple, or single-junction, solar cell.

Cell achieved 28.3 percent efficiency, QuantaSol says

Cell achieved 28.3 percent efficiency, QuantaSol says

QuantaSol of Kingston-upon-Thames said the cell it produced in two years achieves a 28.3 percent efficiency at converting sunlight into electricity.

The “strain-balanced, single-junction, quantum-well” cell was tested by Fraunhofer ISE at greater than 500 suns. A single junction cell enables electrical current to flow in just one direction.

The company was formed in 2007 to commercialize the college’s solar technology. It’s cell makes use of nanostructures of two different alloys that are painted on top of crystalline silicon.

The company, which raised second-round funding last week, plans higher efficiency multi-junction cells in the first quarter of next year.

“This is the first time that anyone has successfully combined high efficiency with ease of manufacture, historically a bug-bear of the solar cell industry,” said CEO Kevin Arthur.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Third Monthly Gain For Chip Market Reported

July 3, 2009

Unemployment continues to be intractably high. But chips are selling.

The Semiconductor Industry Association reported Friday the third month of improving chip sales driven by a solid rebound in the Asia-Pacific market.

Monthly chip sales rose 5.4 percent

Monthly chip sales rose 5.4 percent

Global sales rose 5.4 percent in May from April to $15.6 billion, the trade group said.

Granted, business is still down 23.2 percent from a year ago. But the rise suggests a steadily improving market and lifts hopes that end-of-year activity could show seasonal strength from the holidays.

The monthly increase in Asia-Pacific sales was 6.7 percent while in the Americas it was 3.9 percent.

The true test may not come for the market until late summer when companies decide how much product to build for the Christmas holidays.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Palm Frees “GSM” Pre, Cuts Exclusive Deal With UK Operator O2

July 2, 2009
The GSM version of Palms Pre has surfaced in Vietnam. Next, the UK?

The GSM version of Palm's Pre has surfaced in Vietnam. Next, the UK?

Palm Pre second act is set to begin in Europe, a month after its launch in the U.S.

According to British daily newspaper The Guardian, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-company chose O2 as the exclusive operator for the U.K. market. A press conference will be held next week to unveil the news.

O2 is also the sole distributor in the UK for the iPhone 3GS which comes free with an 18-months contract (for the 16GB version), spurring rumours that the Pre will also be available for free with an 18-months contract.

Palm GSM Pre has been ready since February

Palm first showed the “world” version (or GSM) of its smartphone last February at the Mobile World Congress last February in Barcelona.

Indicative of an imminent launch – presumably in September – Palm’s GSM Pre has recently been seen “in the wild” in Vietnam and reviewed by a local reseller.

However it first appears that Palm’s Pre data transmission speed will not match that of the iPhone 3GS.

Here’s the video excerpt of the Palm GSM Pre review from a local Vietnamese reseller:

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Rebound Of 18% Seen In Chip Market

July 2, 2009

It is now becoming widely accepted that the chip market hit its bottom in the first quarter. What remains a matter of debate is how quick the rebound will be.

Researchers at IC Insights suggest the bounce will be fairly significant – in fact, an 18 percent surge to be precise.

In a Wednesday report, the firm said the market should benefit from a strong holiday period, a restocking of depleted inventories and an increase in worldwide GDP (after a decline in the first half of the year).

Here are some data points from the study:

*Second half cellphone and PC unit shipments are to be up by 18 percent and 15 percent, respectively, from the first half;

*China’s second-half gross domestic products is to rise almost 9 percent with the fourth quarter forecast to be more than 9 percent;

*The chip foundry market almost doubled from the first to the second quarters.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Asian IPO Activity Now Rivaling That In The US

July 2, 2009

Since the collapse of the dot-com bubble and the adoption of the Sarbanes-Oxley reform of 2002, financial market experts have worried the United States would lose its IPO leadership.

Asian markets had six IPOs in the second quarter, same as in the US

Asian markets had six IPOs in the second quarter, same as in the US

Without public market investors willing to speculate on startups with new technologies, the fear has been that entrepreneurs would take their companies abroad, or simply abandon ideas judged too risky or unsaleable.

There is no debate that the appetite for IPOs on Nasdaq (and the New York Stock Exchange) is at a low and has been for the better part of a decade. Venture capitalists have adjusted by selling companies privately. But their M&A deals have brought lower returns, and the incentives for big entrepreneurial bets are less than they were in the roaring 1990s.

For a while, expectations grew that secondary exchanges in Europe (particular in London) would fill the shoes of the diminished Nasdaq. Now the expectations (with good cause) are that the soaring economies of Asia might step in.

In this era of economic dislocation (brought on ironically by uncontrolled excesses on Wall Street) there are early signs this might be taking place. The Asian IPO market is feeling strains of its own. There have been several quarters of declining volumes and a suspension of IPOs by the Chinese government in September. But the malaise is ready to reverse.

In the second quarter, for instance, Asian markets saw six IPOs, matching the total of venture-backed IPOs in the U.S., according to Thomson Reuters. Total offering size was $1.9 billion, or just shy of the $2.3 billion in the states, Thomson Reuters reported.

At the same time, there are 32 Chinese companies lined up to sell initial offerings to the public in coming months. Only 10 venture-back companies sit in registration in the U.S.

Times of stress often produce long-lasting market changes. It is possible IPO leadership could be one of them, with devastating consequences for the world’s largest economy.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Why Buy A Netbook When Full-Size Notebooks Cost $300

July 1, 2009
Frys bargain du jour was this eMachines full size notebook for $299

Fry's bargain du jour was this eMachines full size notebook for $299

Although, it’s common now to find most electronics retail stores stocked with Intel Atom-based netbooks selling below $300 and sometimes below $200, it’s definitely unusual to see a full size notebook like the eMachines eMD625 for a mere $300.

So when Fry’s Electronics advertised it yesterday for $299 (plus tax and CA recycling fee) – a $70 off from its regular price – I rushed to its Sunnyvale, CA store location to pick up the bargain “du jour” to try it out!

The laptop – built by Taiwanese-maker Acer - specifications look quite good for the price:

  1. 15.6″ WXGA LCD screen, Wi-Fi, USB, 5-in-1 memory card reader but no webcam
  2. AMD Athlon 64 TF-20 1.6GHz (single core), 2GB Ram Memory, ATI Radeon Xpress 1200 Graphics
  3. 250GB SATA hard disk
  4. DVD player
  5. a full-size keyboard plus numerical pad
  6. and Windows Vista Home Basic
After taxes and the CA recycling fee, I end up paying $343 for the $299 laptop

After taxes and the CA recycling fee, I end up paying $343 for the $299 laptop

Yet more powerful, larger (and heavier!) than the HP mini-note or Acer Aspire One that were placed next to it on Fry’s shelves, the eMachines eMD625 laptop is certainly not a powerhouse despite ATI’s integrated graphics chip: 2 videos running simultaneously (YouTube, ESPN360, Hulu, DVD) are un-watchable. Of course, you could question the need for that too. Although I haven’t tried watching an HD movie on it but my guess is that it won’t work well either.

But some of the overall slow performance could be caused by Windows Vista, which should be a thing of the past as soon as I install Xandros’ Presto on it and Windows 7 (keep fingers crossed).

All in all, the eMachines eMD625 is a decent full-size laptop for the price, good for office, Web and light multimedia (video, imaging, music/iTunes).

Of course, not everybody looking for a thin and light netbook will be happy with this 6 pounds notebook. But I’m sure my Mom wouldn’t mind swapping her old PC with this laptop :-)

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Second Quarter’s Five Venture Backed IPOs Best In A Year But So What

July 1, 2009

The news from the second quarter might easily be mistaken for good.

Five venture-backed IPOs launched during the three months – the highest total since the first quarter of 2008, when there also were five.

Only 10 companies are lined up to follow as IPO activity remains slow

Only 10 companies are lined up to follow as IPO activity remains slow

But activity in the market place remains very slow, so slow few companies even bother to file registration papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters, there were five venture-backed initial public offerings during the just ended quarter, five information-technology companies and the clean-tech outfit SolarWinds.

While the total was a boost from the first quarter, when there were none, it is no real departure from the sluggish pace of the past year and a half. Since the start of 2008, only 11 venture-backed companies have sold shares on a public market in the U.S., compared with 86 in 2007 and 57 in 2007.

The market in essence has still not recovered from the dot-com implosion – and it is clearly worrisome for the U.S. economy. IPOs allow young companies to raise cash for expansion and in doing so create jobs.

Young companies also are a source of valuable technological innovation.

“We remain concerned about the extremely thin pipeline of companies in registration as it indicates that it will be some time before we can even be in a position to return to healthy IPO activity levels,” said NVCA President Mark Heesen. Only 10 are registered to offer shares.

The danger for the U.S. economy is that exchanges elsewhere begin to fill the shoes of the Nasdaq and other exchanges in the U.S., that have traditionally welcomed startups.

So far they haven’t. But it is probably just a matter of time. In the second quarter, one venture-backed company launched on a foreign exchange: California based Array Networks went public on the Taiwan exchange.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Cautious Buyers Steer Clear Of Startups But Some Good For Young Companies

July 1, 2009

Even with prices down, buyers of technology startups balked at bargain hunting in the second quarter as the merger and public offering markets remained in a downturn induced paralysis.

Venture capital liquidity fell 57 percent in the secon quarter as the idustry returns to 2003 levels

Venture capital liquidity fell 57 percent in the secon quarter as the idustry returns to 2003 levels

Three initial public offerings of venture-back companies took place during the cautious three months – the first IPOs in about nine months.

But overall, money raised by venture capitalists selling or floating the shares of their portfolio companies fell 57 percent, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. The industry took in just $2.8 billion compared with 6.5 billion a year earlier.

What’s more, the median price paid for startups fell to just under $22 million, down 46 percent.

The dire results led Jessica Canning, VentureSource’s director of global research, to suggest that 2007, when the mergers ad IPO markets began to revitalize after six slow years, was an anomaly.  “The market appears to be correcting the possibly inflated figures,” she said.

But the results are most likely the result of gun-shy buyers and investors waiting out the worse of the economic downturn before committing cash. And it is likely to continue as long as the deep uncertainty of the downturn remains.

At the top of the list of active buyers was Cisco Systems, which bought camcorder maker Pure Digital for $590 million and Tidal Software, a maker of workload management software, for $105 million.

The largest IPO came from SolarWinds of Austin, Texas, which went public and raised $113 million in May

But in a positive sign for startups, VentureSource found that the average company was younger and raised less money than a year ago.

The median age of an acquired company was 4.5 years, compared with 6 years in the second quarter of 2008. At the same time, that company raised $16.3 million, down 30 percent from a year earlier.

In this year’s quarter, 67 venture-backed companies were sold for $2.57 billion, a 60 percent decline.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

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