Your next TV could be a cellphone. According to Strategy Analytics' Connected Home service, more than a quarter of digital TV devices sold worldwide in 2010 will be mobile phones, as handset vendors strive to place a "TV in every pocket." Traditional devices, such as set-top boxes, however, will remain the staple for some years; and demand for these will also increase. The report, 'Digital TV Diversifies: Global Demand Will Shift Away From STBs,' predicts that device manufacturers likely to lead the fixed/mobile DTV convergence opportunity are Samsung, Sony/Sony Ericsson and LG. According to the research, 71 million digital TV devices will be sold globally this year, of which 1.9 million will be DTV phones. By 2010 annual sales of all devices will be 279 million, with mobile devices accounting for 73.5 million. In spite of these growth forecasts, mobile DTV faces usability obstacles and perceptions as well as barriers related to operator network strategies and government and regulator approaches.
Few technology sectors sit as close to the center of gravity in today's artificial intelligence (AI) economy as semiconductor manufacturing. Every AI chip that trains a frontier model, every GPU that powers a data center inference workload, and every power management IC that keeps hyperscaler facilities running traces its origins back to the global Foundry ecosystem. IDC's latest market study throws that reality into sharp relief, projecting that the broadly defined Foundry 2.0 market will surpass $360 billion in 2026, a 17 percent year-over-year gain that would have seemed optimistic even two years ago. For anyone advising boards or investment committees on technology and AI infrastructure strategy, this growth trajectory demands careful consideration. Foundry 2.0 Market Development The umbrella term covers four distinct verticals: pure-play foundry, non-memory integrated device manufacturer (IDM) production, outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT), and photomask fab...