YEAR IN REVIEW 2000: COMPUTERS-AND-INFO-SYSTEMS

Computers and Information Systems The phenomenal growth of the Internet was the dominant theme in computers and information systems in 1999. New World Wide Web-based companies, such as Amazon.com, became familiar names; ordinary people bid in on-line auctions; and traditional bricks-and-mortar companies, such as banks, pursued e-commerce strategies. Microelectronics Projected worldwide sales of semiconductors grew 15% to $144 billion in 1999, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). The downturn in sales during 1998, caused by Asia's economic problems, reversed itself, and the industry expected to see average growth rates of more than 20% in the next two years, primarily because of the growth in Internet-related products and wired and wireless information appliances. The SIA anticipated a growth rate of 21% in the year 2000 and 20% in 2001, which would result in sales of $234 billion by 2002. Flash memory was the fastest-growing product in 1999, owing to its use in mobile phones and digital cameras. The SIA estimated that the flash-memory market grew 63% in 1999 to $4.1 billion and that in the year 2000 there would be 80 million subscribers to wireless telephone services, an increase of 33% over 1999. Other growth areas included dynamic random access memory (DRAM), up 31% in 1999, and microprocessors, which grew 11% to $28 billion as the market shifted from the maturing personal computer (PC) market to embedded applications. Digital signal processors (DSPs) were becoming the fastest-growing product line in the industry. Along with microcontrollers, this segment of the market was expected to grow faster than microprocessors, becoming a $22 billion market by 2001. MOS Logic, used in video games and networking infrastructure products, was expected to grow from a $23 billion market in 1999 to $37 billion by 2002, an increase of more than 37%. The Americas (North and South) represented about one-third of worldwide chip revenues, and the SIA expected revenues of $47 billion in 1999, a 13% increase over 1998 and an increase of 20% over the next two years. Owing to the turnaround in its countries' economies, the Asia-Pacific market (Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and India) had become the second largest chip market, increasing to $35 billion (21%) in 1999, overtaking Europe, where the growth rate was only 6% (to $31 billion) in 1999 but was expected to increase significantly in the next two years. Japan, while growing 21% in 1999, was still somewhat influenced by its recession. National Semiconductor announced in May that it would sell its recently acquired Cyrix microprocessor facilities and abandon the PC market, though it would continue to produce integrated processors for information appliances. Cyrix started the year with less than 16% of the PC-chip market, mostly in the low-end computer market, with tight profit margins. Meanwhile, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) unseated Intel Corp. as the majority provider of chips for the PC market. In 1999 almost 44% of PCs were equipped with AMD's K6 processors, 4% more than those with Intel chips. Intel announced its next-generation Pentium chip, the PIII. With speeds of 450 MHz and 500 MHz, the chips included multimedia instructions to improve the performance of three-dimensional (3-D) graphics, video, and audio applications. Intel used a new 0.18-micron copper technology to increase the PIII speed up to 600 MHz. AMD introduced the Athlon, clocked at 650 MHz. By November, however, Intel had introduced a 733-MHz PIII chip and a mobile 500-MHz microprocessor. The Federal Trade Commission reached a legal settlement on its antitrust suit against Intel on March 17. Intel agreed to share technical details about its chips with other companies, except in rare circumstances, although it did not admit to monopoly powers. In an effort to gain entry into the field of the Internet-related semiconductors, Intel agreed to pay $2.2 billion to acquire Level One Communications Inc. In October Intel agreed to pay $1.6 billion to purchase DSP Communications Inc., a cellular phone chip manufacturer. Mobile phone access to the Internet emerged as a new and fast-growing application in the microelectronics industry. The emergence of third-generation cellular phones (3G), based upon Wideband Code-Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA) technology, was being driven by global system for mobile (GSM) communications standards and the world's largest wireless provider, NTT DoCoMo of Japan. Companies such as Motorola were partnering with network providers such as Cisco Systems to create Internet-based wireless networks. These new Internet phones would include 32-bit embedded processors with a real-time operating system, DSPs for signal processing, an encryption processor with smart-card interface, a data communications controller, and several megabytes of random access memory. Transmission rates of up to 348,000 bits per second (348 kbps, or 348K) would be available by the year 2001. VLSI Technology received an order in April from Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., for $34 million worth of its GSM chipset. The Federal Communications Commission's intent to provide wireless 911 service would see chip manufacturers incorporating Global Positioning Satellite capabilities into their cellular products. Recession-plagued Japanese-owned Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and NEC Corp. both announced layoffs of almost 15,000 employees each over the next three years. More than one-third of the layoffs would be in their overseas operations. Siemens AG spun off its semiconductor operation into a new 25,000-employee company named Infineon Technologies AG. In February Motorola Inc. announced that its Semiconductor Products Sector, the third largest chip manufacturer, would outsource up to 50% of its production by 2002. In May the Texas Pacific Group acquired Motorola's low-end chip operations for $1.6 billion and took on a new name, ON Semiconductor. Thomas E. Kroll Telecommunications. The year 1999 reflected the influences of the Internet on the telecommunications industry, notably in terms of industry consolidation. Within one year AT&T, the largest long-distance carrier in the U.S., also became the largest cable television provider with its acquisition of cable companies Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI) for more than $53 billion and the MediaOne Group for about $58 billion. MCI WorldCom, the country's second largest long-distance company, bid $115 billion for number three Sprint Corp., including its wireless network, which made WorldCom, the company's new name, the beneficiary of the largest takeover in corporate history. Also completed in 1999, after almost 17 months of waiting for approvals by local and federal regulators, was the purchase of Ameritech Corp. by SBC Communications Inc. (formerly the Southwestern Bell Telephone Co.) for about $72 billion. This reduced the original number of regional Bell operating companies formed by the breakup of AT&T in l984 to four. As part of the approval process, Ameritech sold its wireless service to GTE for nearly $3.3 billion. Three days after completing the merger, former Ameritech chairman and CEO Richard C. Notebaert announced his retirement at year's end after 31 years. Less than a week later, Ameritech Illinois Corp.'s president, Douglas Whitney, was terminated by the new owners. Bell Atlantic and GTE combined for $65 billion. Vodafone AirTouch PLC (the company formed by the approximately $60 billion acquisition of AirTouch Communications, Inc., by Britain's largest wireless company, Vodafone Group PLC, in January) merged its U.S. network with the Bell Atlantic Corp., which made Bell Atlantic the largest wireless phone company in the U.S. High-speed Internet cable provider @Home Corp. acquired Excite Inc., an Internet entry site, for $6.7 billion and became AT&T@Home when AT&T acquired its major shareholder, TCI. Hardware mergers included Lucent Technologies' $24 billion purchase of Ascend Communications, a major manufacturer of the packet switches used by Internet providers. Motorola, Inc., bought General Instrument Corp., a manufacturer of set-top boxes used to deliver Internet services to TVs, for $11 billion. U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton used the on-line chat room concept for a town hall meeting in November, the first president to use the Internet for that purpose. The popularity of the Internet for accessing information via phone, cable, and wireless media was exemplified when Encyclopdia Britannica introduced its World Wide Web site, Britannica.com, and experienced more than 10 million hits (attempts to access the site) per day, which initially exceeded the site's capacity. Iridium LLC, a $5 billion global satellite telephone network, lost more than $500 million in the first quarter of 1999 and saw three of its top executives leave the company. Heavily backed by Motorola with about a 20% stake, Iridium failed to meet its sales objectives. With phones costing as much as $3,000 and connection charges of more than $3 per minute, it attracted only about 2% of its forecast customer base. In August Iridium defaulted on $1,550,000,000 in loans and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Shares plummeted from a l998 high of $72 per share, and Motorola took charges of almost $1 billion in its third quarter to cover Iridium expenses. Meanwhile, Motorola announced it would invest $1 billion over the next 10 years in a joint venture with Sun Microsystems, Inc., to ensure that its mobile phones were compliant with the Wireless Application Protocol Internet phone technology. This technology would allow global Internet access at speeds up to 128,000 bits per second (128 kbps, or 128K). AT&T and Sprint (WorldCom) also announced high-speed wireless phone services. AT&T and British Telecommunications PLC announced an extension of their 1998 $10 billion joint venture to provide compatible wireless phone services to more than 41 million customers in 17 countries. In January the U.S. Supreme Court gave the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authority to set guidelines for how much local companies could charge for access to their local networks in order to implement provisions of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Reversing a 20-year ban, the FCC also proposed in January to license low-powered (below 1,000 w) FM stations. Other actions by the FCC during 1999 included a mandate to the telephone companies to provide easier-to-read telephone bills, endorsement of the SBC-Ameritech merger, and approval of the AT&TBritish Telecom global joint venture. In November the FCC allowed AT&T to raise the fee levied on phone bills for subsidizing services to the poor and hard-to-service areas and for school Internet access to $1.38 from 99 cents. In January the Supreme Court also rejected a bid by SBC, U.S. West, and Bell Atlantic to enter the long-distance telephone market until they met the open-markets requirement of the 1998 Telecommunications Bill. In November the Department of Justice rejected a bid by Bell Atlantic to provide long-distance service in New York, stating that they were not doing enough to open their local markets. Congress passed legislation in 1999 to allow satellite content providers to offer local stations to their customers, provided they met certain requirements. In April the NBC television network broadcast The Tonight Show in high-definition TV, which made it the first regularly scheduled program to be delivered in HDTV. It was expected that as more stations became capable of delivering HDTV signals and more programming became available, the price of HDTV sets would decrease to around $2,000, about one-fifth of the cost in 1999. The U.S. telecommunications network, once noted for its reliability, suffered a number of outages during the year, the most significant of which was a 10-day outage of MCI WorldCom's frame relay network, costing the company $29 million in credits to its customers. The failure was attributed to upgrades to one of the two frame relay networks carrying the majority of its customer traffic. Some 3,000 customers, including the Chicago Board Options Exchange, many small Internet service providers, and automatic teller machines were affected. The company planned to provide two parallel nets to prevent future catastrophes. Thomas E. Kroll