Electronics Industry United States

As spending on new personal computers slows, the company synonymous with their rise, Microsoft Corp., has aggressively shifted its focus to consumer gadgetry, hoping that video game machines and high-tech televisions will keep the company on top.

As spending on new personal computers slows, the company synonymous with their rise, Microsoft Corp., has aggressively shifted its focus to consumer gadgetry, hoping that video game machines and high-tech televisions will keep the company on top.

Hoping to become a mouse that roared, tiny Go-Video Inc. announced Wednesday that it has reached an agreement with Samsung Electronics Co. of Korea that will allow the video firm to become the first to market a dual-deck videocassette recorder in this country.

This is the year of the wired home. That mantra has been chanted with a glazed-eyed and near-religious fervor for the last year by everyone from PC giants to consumer electronic makers. So why do all these major players in the digital world--including Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp. and Sony Corp.--look so desperate and confused?

Rogersound Labs, whose owners were burdened by debt acquired when they bought the local audio and video retail chain, has filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors, becoming the latest casualty in the consumer electronics industry. The Canoga Park-based Rogersound, founded in 1971 by Howard Rogers, was sold to a group of investors in 1989 for an undisclosed price. The private firm, which filed for protection from creditors on Monday in U.S.

In the classic tradition of the Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Gordon Campbell has struck it rich in the computer chip business. The company he founded less than six years ago, Chips & Technologies, had sales of nearly $300 million last year, and Campbell himself has amassed a fortune. But unlike traditional semiconductor companies, Chips & Technologies does not actually manufacture anything.

Although the Senate-approved ban on imports of Toshiba Corp.'s products could deal an embarrassing setback to the Japanese electronics giant, officials said Wednesday that Toshiba's U.S. assembly lines should keep running at full speed. In fact, several observers said congressional efforts to punish the Japanese company for selling sensitive technology to the Soviet Union could have the unintended effect of increasing Toshiba's manufacturing presence in America. The future of Toshiba's U.S.

It was April 7, and W. J. "Jerry" Sanders and Irwin Federman, two of Silicon Valley's most easily recognized executives, were doing a deal at the Chantilly, a Palo Alto restaurant where the hushed buzz of serious high-tech conversation is mellowed by $250 bottles of ruby red wine and blush pink decor. When dinner was over and their deal nearly done, Sanders paid the bill. "When I'm with Jerry, he picks up the tab," Federman recounted.

Isaac Merrit Singer did not invent the sewing machine, but he is credited with developing the first practical sewing device that revolutionized the production of garments--and domestic life--in America. The company he founded in 1851, which has become the most recent target of corporate raider T. Boone Pickens Jr., left the sewing machine business last year in favor of greater emphasis on military electronics, a move it said would result in an "increased strategic focus."

In an apparent effort to help reduce trade friction between Japan and the United States, Toyota plans to more than double its imports of U.S.-built cars and other products into Japan over the next three years, the company said Monday. Toyota, Japan's largest auto maker, said that by 1992, its imports of American products into Japan will total $2.1 billion, up from $1 billion in 1989. Toyota said it will ship up to 40,000 U.S.

In 1998, the last time the electronics and automotive industries converged in Detroit to ponder what gizmos drivers might want in cars, global sales of in-vehicle communications hardware and services totaled $2 billion. With sales now at $4.2 billion and forecast to rise more than tenfold to $47 billion by decade's end, some of the biggest names in computers and telecommunications are making pitches at this week's newly expanded Convergence 2000 conference. Sun Microsystems Inc.

Despite fears that the world economy is having a long, bad winter and U.S. semiconductor electronics companies are suffering the chills, the stocks of prominent companies such as Intel, Texas Instruments and Advanced Micro Devices are selling at or near 52-week highs. Prices of semiconductor newcomers such as Broadcom and Rambus are soaring. And electronic manufacturing companies such as Solectron, Jabil Circuit and Flextronics all hit new highs in the last week. What's going on?

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., the world's largest consumer electronics manufacturer, will close down its computer chip-making operations in the United States by year's end. The move will affect about 340 employees at the Puyallup, Wash., factory of Matsushita Semiconductor Corp., an affiliate of Osaka, Japan-based Matsushita Electric Industrial. Matsushita sells products under the Panasonic, Quasar, National and Technics names.

In a development that could delay the introduction of a long-awaited consumer electronics technology, Philips Electronics and Sony Corp. on Friday broke ranks with a consortium of eight other electronics giants and announced they will begin licensing their patents for digital video disc systems on their own.

Electronics Firms Launch Manufacturing Initiative: A group of leading companies that includes AT&T Corp., Compaq Computer Corp., Electronic Data Systems Inc., General Electric Co., IBM Corp., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Motorola Inc. will announce in Los Angeles today a public-private partnership aimed at improving the nation's electronics manufacturing capabilities.

The consumer electronics industry is constantly searching for hot new products that might rival the VCR or the CD player in sales. But most recent efforts to establish new mass-market products have been a bust. * CDI: Philips' Compact Disc-Interactive, launched in 1991, was supposed to usher in the multimedia revolution. But the machine was clunky, expensive and late, and it lacked good software--the perfect recipe for failure.

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., the world's largest consumer electronics manufacturer, will close down its computer chip-making operations in the United States by year's end. The move will affect about 340 employees at the Puyallup, Wash., factory of Matsushita Semiconductor Corp., an affiliate of Osaka, Japan-based Matsushita Electric Industrial. Matsushita sells products under the Panasonic, Quasar, National and Technics names.

The consumer electronics industry is constantly searching for hot new products that might rival the VCR or the CD player in sales. But most recent efforts to establish new mass-market products have been a bust. * CDI: Philips' Compact Disc-Interactive, launched in 1991, was supposed to usher in the multimedia revolution. But the machine was clunky, expensive and late, and it lacked good software--the perfect recipe for failure.

For nearly a decade, the consumer electronics industry has been witnessing an incredible series of advances in digital audio and video technology--but has experienced mostly frustration when it came to converting those technologies into mass-market products. But as the annual Consumer Electronics Show opens here today, many in the business are convinced that this long and paradoxical drought is finally at an end.

Anyone benefiting from the remarkable boom now under way in U.S. high technology owes a debt of gratitude to Asia. Not because Asians are buying products--though U.S.-brand electronics are proving remarkably popular there. Rather, the recent success of many U.S.-owned technology firms rests on the growing technical sophistication and competitive strength of non-Japanese Asian companies.