The hardware manufacturing community welcomed Brazos, which launched with about 150 design wins, and it looks as if they are similarly enthusiastic about Llano, which has already garnered 145.
For example, if outsourcing hardware manufacturing provides IBM (NYSE:IBM) a cost advantage, it also does for its competitors, such as the Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), Dell Computers (NYSE:DELL), and EMC (NYSE:EMC) that will follow suit.
Even two decades after the Apollo moon mission, all the energies of hardware manufacturing firms were focused on semiconductors (like DRAMs or CPUs), color televisions, cars, Walkmans, CDs, VHS recorders, and a new consumer item called the personal computer.
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And the Xbox is merely Microsoft's first stab at manufacturing hardware that runs its own software and online services.
Their experience with the manufacturing hardware used to make HDD components was transferred to making semiconductor devices, such as flash memory, or in many cases, making solar energy products.
While GigaSpaces is also monitoring the development of competing hardware suites from other manufacturing, "right now, there isn't anything else that's complete, " Shalom says.
In the early 1990s the company squandered enormous resources and billions of dollars on a series of failed consumer products like the Newton PDA. Its efforts to do everything itself, building capabilities as varied as cutting-edge hardware development and volume manufacturing, led to huge losses and massive layoffs.
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And the move to installing fiber and manufacturing its own hardware mean that the company is diversifying its business model to include more direct payments from users and not be wholly dependent on advertising revenues to fund all of this infrastructure.
If Cook ever realizes that he could compete in this market and sell Mac OS to consumers without the need for storing or manufacturing big and bulky hardware, he may be tempted to do so.
The SLS rocket will incorporate technological investments from the Space Shuttle program and the Constellation program in order to take advantage of proven hardware and cutting-edge tooling and manufacturing technology that will significantly reduce development and operations costs.
Commercially manufacturing this kind of nano-hardware data storage still remains years, if not decades, away.
In the future, I think you will see more unified manufacturing where a company does the hardware and software.
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In September it posted new guidelines: In addition to providing background information, hardware creators are now required to submit a manufacturing plan and a prototype.
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As it often does, Intel has created a number of reference designs, which hardware OEMs may use to specify systems for their manufacturing partners.
Today's hardware start-ups also can cut costs by outsourcing manufacturing to Asia and selling directly to consumers over the Internet.
But for Google to get knee-deep in handset and tablet manufacturing is a notable shock for its Asian hardware partners.
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Motorola Mobility hardware unit has indefinitely suspended operations at its phone-manufacturing facility in India and cut 76 jobs there as part of its global cost-reduction program.
These days electronics manufacturing service firms make almost 20% of all hardware products, nearly double their share four years ago.
Samsung seems to accept the commodity nature of hardware and works with it rather than electing to move out of manufacturing.
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From software to completed designs, Hillcrest offers an unmatched suite of motion solutions, with global expertise in software, hardware, MEMS, DSP, industrial design, mechanical design, and manufacturing.
His obsessive focus on getting products to look the way he wanted, no matter what the impact on cost and manufacturing time, led to frequent clashes with Apple's hardware chief Jon Rubinstein.
The process of designing and manufacturing the Pixel will have taught Google a lot about the hardware business - and with products like Google Glass on the horizon, that knowledge could prove very useful.
Continuing a shift in focus from apps to hardware, Makerbot CEO Bre Pettis spoke about the 3D printing renaissance, in which all manufacturing needs, even prosthetic limbs, can be created through this new technology.
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