IDC lowers semiconductor revenue outlook for 2012, 2013

                                      
IDC has lowered its outlook for global semiconductor revenue in 2012 and 2013. Previously, the outfit expected industry revenue to grow 4.6% to $315 billion this year, but its latest forecast has reduced those figures to less than 1% growth on revenue of $304 billion. Meanwhile, the firm anticipated next year's revenue to hit $335 billion, up 6.2%, while the newest estimates are 4.9% growth with $319 billion revenue.

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The transistor turns 65

                    
Happy birthday, transistor The transistor, the ubiquitous building block of all electronic circuits, will be 65 years old on Sunday. The device is jointly credited to William Shockley (1910-1989), John Bardeen (1908-1991) and Walter Brattain (1902-1987), and it was Bardeen and Brattain who operated the first working point-contact transistor during an experiment conducted on 16 December 1947. Yet this now ubiquitous device -- these days more as an element in silicon chip design than as a discrete component -- has a history that goes back to the mid-1920s.

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