[libit]
good afternoon john,
thanks for the heads up...
heard about the libit/txn negotiations starting again, but youza, youza $315 million!!! reportedly libit has a 100 person development team: TXN is paying 315/100= $3.15 million a head!!!
earlier reports had intc weighing in at $100-$120 million, then came lu @ $250 million.. sounds like lu left the door open a tad and bingo another $65 million and lu was history...
maybe it was the price and given that fujitsu hasn't experienced the same stock appreciation as lu, intc and txn have over the last couple of years and therefore it was more than they felt they could pay, nonetheless would think fujitsu would have been at least interested... after all, over the last couple of years the two have been working together on both silicon and product (sound familiar?) : they had a "collaborative agreement to jointly develop and market a range of new devices for the DVB, Set-Top Box and Cable Modem markets."
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completely agree with you about libit helping orct, but again think its gonna be longer term rather than shorter term... it's probably only you, me and another dozen or so people who might get the implications.. heck the israeli tech press doesn't even seem to understand that there's an orct "subsidiary" (ultracom) in pretty much the same business as libit (but probably not quite as far along) ... the significance of libit's recent dealings for orct may be lost on just about everyone else, but doubt if it's lost on orct/ultracom management: $$$
today's globes :
"Lucent, on the other hand, was left with no real alternatives - at least not of Libit's size. The only options open to Lucent at the moment are Broadcom, which trades at a market value of some $5 billion, and Teryon, whose value stands at about $1 billion, following its recent IPO.
Has TI paid a high price for Libit? Considering the other, virtually nonexistent, alternatives on the market, the answer is no.."
globes.co.il
hint/plea: globes- please check out ultracom and report- think there's a very local story here for you ..
figure eventually someone will be able to sort out what ultracom is up to (my guess: new hot standard's compliant silicon- having set aside their pride and joy noncompliant Variable Constellation/Multi-Tone Modulation-VC/MTM for the time being) and who they are working with (??) , while ultracom may have been snookered in the last round of standards, they do seem to be gearing up on something:
"Ultracom Moves into New Tel Aviv Office for Growing R&D Group
Ultracom's rapidly growing R&D Group has outgrown its current office and is expanding into a new office in a high tech suburb of Tel Aviv, Israel. The new office is specially equipped with high capacity data networking to support concurrent engineering processes for large systems-on-a-chip designs. In the past year, Ultracom's R&D Group has grown four-fold with additional world-class ASIC designers, digital signal processing engineers, and modulation experts.
ultracominc.com (news)
note no date on above- this could be old news, but they are still hiring... :)
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as you probably know, orct and libit are related both in terms of personel and technology :the founders are ex-orckiteers and the fundamental tech expertise seems to be a cousin of xdsl...
fwiw, ultracomm was spun off from orct in early 96... they are separate companies with separate management, and funding: ultracom's been thru a couple of rounds of financing... and they pay orct to do contract engineering for them... orct still has a pretty good chunk of the action (and orct owns the core cable modem technology leasing it to ultracom)
from the really really small print in the new (98) orct 20f: "Orckit is developing certain cable modem technology for Ultracom, an Israeli company, of which the Company owns approximately 15% of the share capital on a fully-diluted basis. Subject to certain events, the Company is entitled to increase its share ownership in Ultracom up to approximately 28%..." and i believe Tamir is one of Ultracom's five directors...
btw ultracomm communications here in the usa seems to be a marketing "subsidiary" altho they describe the israeli arm as their subsidiary... and howard strachman (hybrid networks co-founder) and ultracom "founder" seems like a character/player ... and i believe has hybrid network connections back to both intc and lu and other players... tho i don't put much weight in that angle...
also fwiw as "quiet" as orct is about their dealings... ultracom seems even more so... and as no doubt you understand by now, i could have this all upside down and backwards... :)
hope your weekend is/was enjoyable
see ya
s |
