Touch user interfaces have made significant advances in the consumer electronics market particularly for mobile phones and notebook computers, opening the door for adoption in other applications including white goods, computer peripherals, medical equipment, and instrumentation. Synaptics made its debut in the home appliance market earlier this year with the launch of the Samsung Hauzen ZERO air conditioner.
The standout products on day three of the SID 2010 conference is Universal Display's new PHOLED display architecture with a unique four-color, sub-pixel design, which promises to drive commercial development of all-phosphorescent active-matrix OLEDs and Sony's tiny rollable OLED display that can wrap around a pencil.
Smaller distributors were the only ones to post sales gains in 2009. Interestingly, two of the five distributors that posted growth last year -- Interstate Connecting Components and Sherburn Electronics -- derive 100 percent of their sales from interconnect products. Both of them also target the military/aerospace industry. Here are the top 10 sales leaders by ICs, passives/electromechanical devices, interconnects and computer products as well as sales growth.
Spot pricing for DDR3 DRAMs fall, DDR2 increases
Stamford, Conn. — Spot pricing for leading-edge DDR3 devices fell last week, while the older DDR2 technology continues on an upward trend, reports Gartner Inc. The price adder for DDR3 parts has now narrowed to about 30 percent compared with the DDR2 parts, down from 65 percent a few weeks ago, according to the market researcher.
Gartner says there has been a small shift back to DDR2 devices among PC vendors, especially for low-end machines. As a result of increased demand for DDR2, in combination with shrinking supply, the average selling prices (ASPs) for DDR2 has increased. The researcher says this may tempt Taiwanese vendors to restart idle capacity to take advantage of the higher pricing.
According to Gartner, Tier 1 vendors must continue to drive down costs for DDR3 devices, so when the restarted capacity enters the supply chain in early to mid-fourth quarter 2009, DDR3 pricing can compete with the DDR2 technology with little or no price adder. Otherwise, this could delay the uptake of DDR3 technology in 2010, said the researcher.
Average spot pricing across all densities and technologies was up 4.9 percent compared with the previous week, standing at $1.61 on a 1-Gb equivalent basis. Current pricing is trading at 102.4 percent above the 52-week low and just 12.9 percent below the 52-week high.
Gartner recently published its new DRAM forecast — Forecast: DRAM Supply and Demand, Worldwide, 1Q08-4Q10 (3Q09 Update), which indicates that supply to the market is growing at 15.6 percent compared with the previous year, while the demand growth forecast has been revised up to 18.5 percent. Gartner says is the lowest demand growth in the 35 years that it has tracked the market.
Gartner believes that the industry has entered a mild undersupply period that will last through 2010.
NXP offers a low-power IC aimed at MPPT applications using PV cells or fuel cells. 
C&K Components offers a series of low-cost, miniature slide switches. The OS Series of RoHS-compliant switches feature a new high-temperature option for lead-free soldering.