Economist, Aug 24, 2013

choi

(1) Semiconductors |  Serial Disrupter; MediaTek has burst into the market for smartphone chips.
http://www.economist.com/news/bu ... ps-serial-disrupter

Quote: MediaTek "entered the smartphone-chip market in 2011. That year just 10m smartphones [plus 500m basic mobile phones in 2010] were shipped containing its technology. Last year the number jumped to 110m. This year it expects 200m, plus 15m-20m tablets * * * Stuart Robinson of Strategy Analytics, a research firm, says MediaTek is already the fourth-biggest maker of smartphones’ application processors (or 'brains'), with a shade less than 10% of the market, a few points behind Apple and Samsung. America’s Qualcomm is far out in front with almost half.

Note:
(a) "'We are very confident that in the next three to five years we will be in the top two vendors of systems-on-a-chip for smartphones,' says Ming-Kai Tsai, the founder and chairman. * * * Founded in 1997, MediaTek began with controllers for CD-ROMs. It soon came up with a design needing one chip rather than several. Taiwanese manufacturers took it up; Toshiba, Sony and others followed. By 2000 it had captured more than half of a market once dominated by Japanese firms."
(i) "Ming-Kai TSAI, the founder and chairman" of MediaTek
蔡 明介 (1950年出生於屏東縣農家) /聯發科技股份有限公司

In 閩南語 and Cantonese, 介 is pronounced “kai” officially (but my opinion is “gai” is closer to reality).
(ii) "David KU, the chief financial officer"  首席財務長 顧 大為
(iii) Mobile Chipsets. MediaTek, undated
http://www.mediatek.com/_en/01_p ... sn=1&cata1_sn=1
(“Few markets have been more influenced by MediaTek’s presence than the market for mobile devices, which the company entered in 2004 as a provider of SoC [system on a chip] total solutions for feature phones and later smartphones”)

But I can not find out the model/series number(s) of those 2004 chipset(s).

(b) "Many of those clients are Chinese phonemakers almost unheard of in the West, such as BBK, Gionee, OPPO and Xiaomi. In China they are anything but unfamiliar. Domestic smartphone brands’ share has soared from 25% to 70% in the past two years, as the market has expanded more than fivefold, according to Gartner, another research firm."
(i) BBK Electronics  廣東省步步高電子工業有限公司
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBK_Electronics
("The primary market for BBK is Russia. So all devices have Russian menus and manuals")
(ii) GiONEE Communication Equipment Co, Ltd  深圳市金立通信设备有限公司
(iii) OPPO Electronics Corp, Ltd  东莞市欧珀电子工业有限公司

(c)
(i) Willy C SHIH, Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Management Practice in Business Administration, Harvard Business School
http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=194874

史 兆威
Born in 1951, apparently in US
(ii) "Clayton Christensen, author of 'The Innovator’s Dilemma'”

Clayton M Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma; When new technologies cause great firms to fail. Harvard Business Review Press, 1997.
http://www.claytonchristensen.com/books/the-innovators-dilemma/

full text:

"In this revolutionary bestseller, Clayton Christensen demonstrates how successful, outstanding companies can do everything 'right' and yet still lose their market leadership – or even fail – as new, unexpected competitors rise and take over the market.  Through this compelling multi-industry study, Christensen introduces his seminal theory of 'disruptive innovation' that has changed the way managers and CEOs around the world think about innovation.

"While decades of researchers have struggled to understand why even the best companies almost inevitably fail, Christensen shows how most companies miss out on new waves of innovation.  His answer is surprising and almost paradoxic: it is actually the same practices that lead the business to be successful in the first place that eventually can also result in their eventual demise.  This breakthrough insight has made The Innovator’s Dilemma a must-read for managers, CEOs, innovators, and entrepreneurs alike.

(d) Qualcomm "is wise to the threat" posed by MediaTek

wise (adj): "possessing inside information <the police got wise to his whereabouts>"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wise

choi

````````````````````Separately
TSMC   | A fab success; The smartphone boom has been a boon for a pioneer in semiconductors. Economist, July 27, 2013
("This year, predicts Samuel Wang of Gartner, a research firm, TSMC’s revenues will exceed those of all other foundries combined. He reckons it has 90% of the world market for advanced 28-nanometre chips, which are essential to smartphones and tablets")

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest, which is familiar.
(b) Presumably the 28nm categry includes 32nm. To date, there is no other semiconductor doing 28nm. Intel and Globalfoundries does 32nm (Intel made the strides into 32nm in 2009 and 22nm in 2011, according to Intel's website).

choi

(2) Evolution | How the Rhino Got His Woolly; Ice-age giants like the woolly rhino may originally have been Tibetan.
http://www.economist.com/news/sc ... ve-been-tibetan-how   Quote: "The last woolly rhino died about 8,000 years ago. Woolly mammoths lasted another 3,500 years, succumbing only when human beings arrived in their Siberian refuges. What no one has known, however, is when and where these animals evolved the eponymous coats that allowed them to range in such high latitudes.

Note:
(a) "How the Rhino Got His Woolly"
(i) wooly (n): "a garment made from wool"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wooly
(ii) The title is a word play on

Just So Stories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_So_Stories
(section 2 Just-So Stories)
(iii) The Economist article is not new but repeats the findings of a 2011 paper (by the same paleontologist listed in (c) below):

Jonathan Amos, 'Oldest' woolly rhino discovered. BBC, Sept 1, 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14754317
(in Tibet)

(b) "ice began to grip the world 2.6m years ago"

ice age
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
(By this definition, we are still in the ice age that began 2.6 million years ago at the start of the Pleistocene epoch, because the Greenland, Arctic, and Antarctic ice sheets still exist)

(c)  
(i) "Xiaoming WANG, of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County"  王 晓鸣
(ii) "DENG Tao, of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology in Beijing"
中国科学院古脊椎动物与古人类研究所  邓 涛

(d) "This specimen, found in the Zanda Basin of south-western Tibet, dates from 3.7m years ago—well before the ice ages got going."
(i) Zanda Basin  札达 盆地
(ii) 西藏自治区阿里地区 札达县

阿里地区
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%98%BF%E9%87%8C%E5%9C%B0%E5%8C%BA
(section 2 行政区划)

(e) "In particular, though its horn [of Tibet specimen] has been lost, the place where it was attached to its skull is flanked by the sort of crest associated with the flat horns of the ice-age woolly rhino."
(i) Woolly rhinoceros
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_rhinoceros

does not mention the flat horns.
(ii) Shidlovskiy FM et al, Horns of the woolly rhinoceros Coelodonta antiquitatis (Blumenbach, 1799) in the Ice Age Museum collection (Moscow, Russia). Quaternary International xxx: 1-5 (2011)
http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/131/1313208377.pdf
(at page 3: "The F-370 specimen justifies Eichwald (1835) suggestion of the flatness of the woolly rhinoceros nasal horn. The presence of two facets of erasure on the front surface of the nasal horn (Fig. 2b) confirms its use for grazing. Wear on the apical part of the frontal horns shows lifetime polish (Fig. 2c). This is very likely the result of tournament battles with the enemy. Possible evidence is found in late Paleolithic cave paintings picturing the battle of two woolly rhinoceroses in the Chauvet Cave (France). The figure shows the nasal horn blow of the right rhinoceros blocked by the frontal horn
of its rival")

(f) "At the moment the Zanda basin is 4,000 metres above sea level. But fossil snails found near the rhino suggest that when it was alive the area was as much as 5,500 metres up. It must therefore have subsided after having been thrown up during the collision of India with Asia, which created Tibet. Such altitude would have produced just the sort of selective pressure needed for woolly coats, flat horns and other adaptations to the cold to evolve."
(i)
(A) Indian Plate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
(B) ONLY IF you wish to read more about where the Indian Plate came from, how it detached from Africa first and Madagascar later--before it drifted toward Asia--see the first four figures of

geology of the Himalaya
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Himalaya
(ii)
(A) "The elevation history of the Tibetan Plateau is a source of much debate."
(B) Deng T et al, Locomotive implication of a Pliocene three-toed horse skeleton from Tibet and its paleo-altimetry significance. Proc Nat Acad Sci, 109: 7374-7378 (2012)
http://www.pnas.org/content/109/19/7374.full
("there have been heated debates about the history and process of Tibetan Plateau uplift * * * The Tibetan Plateau has gradually risen since the Indian plate collided with the Eurasian plate about 55 million years ago. Regardless of the debates over the rising process and elevation of the plateau * * * This suggests that the Zanda Basin had achieved an elevation comparable to its present-day elevation by 4.6 Ma [million years, where a stands for annus in Latin] ago")

Taking a snapshot at 4.6 million years, this paper did not discuss the ups and downs of Tibetan Plateau, or Zanda Basin.
(C) Nigel Harris, Tibetan Plateau and its implications for Asian Monsoon. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 241: 4-15 (2006; review)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/sci ... i/S0031018206003907
(Fig 3 Estimates of the altitude of the surface of the southern Tibetan Plateau)

The figure showed various estimates, by different groups.

(g) "Rhinos are an ancient lineage. The woolly rhino’s closest living ancestor, as proved by looking at the genes of frozen specimens, is the Sumatran rhino. The line these two belong to split from those leading to the other four modern rhino species some 26m years ago, when Tibet was lower than it is now, so the hypothesis of Dr Wang and Dr Deng is plausible."

Sumatran rhinoceros
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumatran_rhinoceros