Kingtype: Sussing Out the Chinese CATV Equipment Market
CHENGDU, China — While in China this past month, Electronic News Editor Jeff Chappell sat down with the founder and current board chairman of Chengdu Kingtype (Electronic) Group Co. Long Yon Gaing to talk about China, its burgeoning electronics industry, standards, and, specifically, the market for cable, digital and satellite television electronics. Kingtype, the biggest manufacturer of CATV equipment in China, is one of the first domestic, privately held companies to form under China’s economic reforms of the early 1990s. In addition to the Chinese market, it also exports...
Read MoreAgilent: Old Dog Learns New Tricks in Chengdu
CHENGDU, China – Being in the right place at the right time — a cliché, except perhaps in business, where timing and geography can often mean the difference between success and failure. Especially for a U.S. technology company looking to take advantage of the booming market here. So when Palo Alto, Calif.-based Agilent Technologies Inc. announced a joint venture (JV) 10 months ago with a fellow test and measurement instrument maker based here, Chengdu Qianfeng Electronics Ltd. Corp., it raised a few eyebrows in the West. Why form this JV now? After all, Agilent, and before that its...
Read MoreStartup Vies for Opto Market with Homegrown IP
XIAMEN, China – Startups and entrepreneurs are popping up all over China and this southern coastal city, which is also a center of the optoelectronics industry in China, is no exception. Chinese optoelectronics has a bit of a head start over its silicon semiconductor device industry; one of Xiamen’s opto device companies was founded more than two decades ago. But then it also plays host to Xiamen UX High-Speed IC Co. Ltd. UX was founded less than three years ago by a handful of engineers, including Chinese — one of them local — as well as a couple of natives form the United...
Read MoreXiamen: A Bright Light in China’s Tech Industry
XIAMEN, China – If you’ve bought a set-top box recently or perhaps a new appliance – or if you’ve used a remote control in the past decade – there’s a reasonable chance you were utilizing one or components that came from Xiamen Hualian Electronics Co. Ltd. Or if you’re a Wall Street analyst or venture capital firm trying to finger the few start-ups among the multitudes in China that will be successful, or if you compete in the optoelectronics device market, you’ve probably at least heard of a few of the companies, old and new, here in this sub-tropical southern...
Read MoreTI China Engineers Straddle Two Different Cultures (part 2)
SHANGHAI – Editor’s Note: Electronic News Senior Editor Jeff Chappell continues to discuss how working for a U.S.-based international chip company means more than straddling geography and time differences with China-based Texas Instruments engineers Tan Hui, a member of the technical staff and an application manger in the industrial and home appliance semiconductor group; Michael Wang, system engineering manager in the portable power management semiconductor group; Eric Braddom, director of DLP products for TI’s Asia semiconductor group; and Yu Zhen Yu, a senior member of the...
Read MoreTI China Engineers Straddle Two Different Cultures (part 1)
SHANGHAI – Editor’s Note: At the behest of Texas Instruments Corp.’s Jeff Smith, deputy director of Asia Semiconductor Communications, as well as worldwide manager for analog media/analyst relations, four TI China engineers sat down with Electronic News Senior Editor Jeff Chappell to talk for an afternoon, but not about TI or its latest products. Rather, they discussed the experience of being an engineer and working for a U.S.-based, global company doing business in China. The four engineers — three of them Chinese — are a microcosm of what you find in a large foreign...
Read More
All original content posted here -- words and images -- are copyright © Jeff Chappell 2009-2012 unless otherwise noted.
Jeff Chappell: journalism nerd; web geek. That's the short story. Want the longer one?