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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BillyG who wrote (48698)	2/25/2000 3:34:00 PM
From: Steve Fancy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Hello Cubies<g>. This stock has been holding like a champ. I almost bought back in the other day at 83 something but missed it again. On another note, I just bought an Creative labs 6x DVD with hardware decoder for my PC. Anyone know if it's CUBE inside? Thanks, sf

To: BillyG who wrote (48698)	2/25/2000 4:02:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

Life may not be so easy for SGS Thomson..................... forbes.com February 25, 2000 STMicroelectronics Pushes Consumer Chips By Om Malik NEW YORK. 2:15 PM EST-The digital consumer revolution has forced even staid semiconductor companies to take notice of the huge potential in new markets for products such as MP3 players, digital versatile disc players and recorders, and personal video players. Saint Genis Pouilly, France-based chipmaker STMicroelectronics (nyse: STM), owned by the French and Italian governments, is targeting these high-growth product categories. "There is no doubt that the digital consumer is going to prove to be a big market," says Philippe Geyres, vice president and general manager of the consumer electronics division at STMicroelectronics. More news from... Forbes.com STMicroelectronics Pushes Consumer Chips Driving Up Avenue A The Other Online Profiler Complete headlines... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Newswires Big 3 Automakers To Combine Online Buying Ventures Baystreetdirect.com lets public in on IPOs Priceline.com To Add Gasoline To Offerings Complete headlines... The demand for digital consumer devices such as DVD players and set-top boxes is expected to almost double in 2000, according to Cahners In-Stat, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based market research firm. "This is a boom area and our sales are growing at a 50% per annum annual rate," says Geyres. While STMicroelectronics gets about 20% of its $5.1 billion in revenue from chips used in consumer devices, Geyres is hopeful that this figure will continue to rise. In the fourth quarter of 1999, STMicroelectronics sales surged 31% from the 1998's fourth quarter to $1.48 billion, while net income was up 51% to $184 million. STMicroelectronics' stock has risen almost 26% year-to-date and is trading at about $203 per share. The financial performance was helped by better-than-expected sales of chips used in MP3 players. In the fourth quarter, STMicroelectronics shipped about half a million such chips. New York-based investment bank Warburg Dillon Read is forecasting that STMicroelectronics will sell about 2 million MP3 chips in the first half of 2000. This week, STMicroelectronics introduced a Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) Layer 3 audio decoder chip, which allows the recording and playback of voice. Designed primarily for use in mobile phones, the new chip supports both MP3 audio playback and voice recording/playback capabilities. In addition to MP3 players, STMicroelectronics is targeting other markets such as digital video recorders, which could boost revenue even higher, according to company executives. The company is also working with Ericsson (nasdaq: ERICY) to make its phones Bluetooth compliant. Bluetooth is a wireless communications standard that allows multiple devices to communicate and exchange data with each other. Other hot chips being churned out by STMicroelectronics include a chip targeting the $1 billion all-digital car stereo market. This single-chip solution performs all the functions of a complete analog car stereo unit. With these high-growth markets pushing the company, Warburg Dillon Read is forecasting that STMicroelectronics sales will increase to $6.9 billion with a net income to $853 million in 2000 versus $5.06 billion in 1999 sales and $547.3 million in income. STMicroelectronics will have its hands full in markets like DVD and personal video recorders as smaller more nimble rivals such as Milpitas, Calif.-based C-Cube Microsystems (nasdaq: CUBE) have a commanding lead. "In the DVD market, C-Cube is doing really well, despite the fact that you have Sony and Matsushita, which source their chips internally [from their semiconductor divisions]," says Michelle Abraham, an analyst at Cahners In-Stat. C-Cube is finding a lot of success with its latest DVxcel chip, which uses MPEG-2 to decode and encode video and sound. MPEG-2 chip sales will increase to an estimated $1.1 billion in 2003 from $616 million in 1998, according to Cahners In-Stat. C-Cube is also looking to compete with STMicroelectronics in the hot set-top box market and recently did a nice end run by signing a deal with Thomson Multimedia (nyse: TMS), a large set-top box maker and a major STMicroelectronics client. According to a recent SEC filing for C-Cube, Thomson Multimedia has agreed to purchase 475,000 shares of C-Cube along with warrants to purchase 950,000 shares that vest more than seven years and can be accelerated if Thomson purchases certain amounts of C-Cube products. The sale and warrants are at $19.78 per share post-DiviCom. This represents a big new market opportunity for C-Cube, says Dan Scovel, analyst at Fahnestock & Co., a New York-based brokerage. That could also make life difficult for STMicroelectronics, which is one of the biggest chip suppliers to the set-top box market. Its chips are used by two of the largest set-top box makers--General Instrument, a division of Motorola (nyse: MOT), and Scientific Atlanta (nyse: SFA). "We are a truly global company with customers on every continent, and I think we have what it takes to retain our leadership in the digital consumer sector and also increase that position," says Geyres. For STMicroelectronics' sake, let's hope Geyres is right.

To: BillyG who wrote (48698)	2/27/2000 12:44:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

Concurrent and Pinnacle use C-Cube chips.................. broadcastingcable.com Pinnacle, Media DVX team Media DVX, a New York-based company focused on digital ad delivery, and Pinnacle Systems have agreed to develop a version of the Media DVX store-and-forward service that uses Pinnacle's Media-Stream video servers. Media DVX, which has already been working with Grass Valley Group to support its Profile server, made the Pinnacle deal based on requests from several large station groups, says President Ron England. Media DVX customers can now use the MediaStream products to receive commercials and other programming as digital files that are transmitted via satellite using IP multicasting technology. Time Warner offers Concurrent VOD Video-on-demand (VOD) supplier Concurrent Computer Corp. has announced that Oceanic Cable, Time Warner Cable's operation in Mililani, Hawaii, has commercially deployed Concurrent's MediaHawk VOD system. The new service, which is now available to roughly 254,000 households, allows access to movies on demand as well as interactive applications, such as ordering a pizza through the TV remote. "I can pause a movie, switch to the pizza-on-demand channel, order a pizza to be delivered to my home, and then resume watching the movie," says Allan Akamine, Oceanic Cable director of sales and marketing. "I do all of this without having to move from my chair. The subscriber response has been extremely positive."

To: BillyG who wrote (48698)	2/29/2000 6:01:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

DVD-RW................................................... dvdinsider.com Industry Leaders Gathered To Demonstrate DVD-RW In Europe - 2/29/00 Hewlett-Packard Company, MCC/Verbatim, Philips Electronics, Ricoh Company, Sony Corporation and Yamaha Corporation, the industry leaders in CD-ReWritable technology, have reinforced their commitment to 4.7 Gigabyte DVD-RW technology in the first public demonstration in Europe of both real-time recording and immediate playback on currently available DVD-Video and DVD-ROM players. The demonstration featured the use of a Ricoh prototype-recording device. Video content was recorded on DVD+RW media from Ricoh and then played back on a variety of currently available DVD-ROM and DVD-Video devices. 4.7GB DVD+RW technology is a natural evolution of the successful CD-RW format and an important step in the growth path from CD to DVD. The 4.7GB DVD+RW format was designed to be compatible with the rapidly growing installed base of more than 30 million DVD-ROM drives and DVD-Video players. DVD+RW media do not require a cartridge, further enabling playback in the majority of current DVD equipment. ``We've achieved a major milestone in the development of 4.7GB DVD+RW technology,' said Takeshi Matsui, corporate councilor, Ricoh Company Ltd. ``Real-time recording and playback of 4.7GB DVD+RW media brings us one step closer to the capability, compatibility and capacity that our customers expect to see in an out-coming product. Our final target is to install the data file and video file recording capability.'