Despite a relatively small increase in the overall online population over the next five years, the number of U.S. consumers with broadband is expected to grow from slightly under half of households to about 78 percent by the end of 2010, according to a new report from JupiterResearch. "With a clearer value proposition and increasingly reasonable prices, the question people ask themselves is shifting from why would I get broadband? to why wouldn't I get broadband?" said Joe Laszlo, research director. The firm said that the U.S. broadband market will remain a closely contested race between cable modem and phone line-based DSL services, with other technologies relegated to relatively minor roles. Cable, however, is expected to remain the leading residential broadband technology in the U.S. Two key predictions: The Internet gets a little grayer. Online seniors will grow the fastest of any age group, doubling from nearly 10 million in 2004 to just over 20 million by 2010. Nearly one-half of online users will access the Internet from multiple locations, with 65 million online adults having access from both work and home in 2010.
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...