A connected life is becoming, well, the way of life for more and more consumers.
That’s one of the prevalent technology shifts set to define the New Year, according to Ericsson ConsumerLab’s “Ten Hot Consumer Trends 2013” report.
Topping the list: cloud services reshaping device needs.
More than half of tablet users and more than 40% of smartphone users in the U.S. like the seamless transition of apps and data from one device to another.
Expect other industries, from automakers to camera companies, to enter the fray and offer similar pairings of technology for their products—storage cards that can work with digital cameras or cell phones via Wi-Fi, for example.
Increasing numbers of employees are bringing their devices to work. Some 57% of smartphone users use their personal devices at work for business functions, such as receiving and sending emails, planning business trips, scouting locations and searching for other information.
Consumers are less likely to make purchasing decisions in front of a computer screen nowadays, and more likely to do so in a coffee shop, or waiting in line at a store.
Television, like everything else, is going social as more than 62% of viewers use social networking applications such as Facebook or LinkedIn while watching the tube.
Inside the numbers: more than 30% of users are likely to pay for content viewed through social networks.
Sweden-based Ericsson’s ConsumerLab queried more than 100,000 people worldwide in more than 40 countries and 15 “megacities.”
Context on Chipmakers
Orange County has long been a hub for the chipmaker industry, and a recent study by the Semiconductor Industry Association provides some current context.
OC’s 4,400 chip-related jobs ranks a distant second in California behind Santa Clara County, with 29,200 positions.
Los Angeles is No. 3 with 3,400 jobs.
The local tallies seem to be a little on the light side, compared to Business Journal research.
Broadcom Corp., which specializes in chips for computers, cell phones and consumer electronics, employs 2,400 people at its Irvine campus. The company had about $7.4 billion in annual revenue in 2011.
No. 2 Tower Semiconductor Ltd.—which is based in Israel and has its North American operations, in Newport Beach—has 700 local employees. The company, which goes by the TowerJazz name, posts yearly sales of more than $500 million and is considered one of the top specialty foundries in the world.
Aliso Viejo-based Microsemi Corp. maintained its No. 3 ranking with 278 employees, up nearly 7% from a year earlier, according to the Business Journal’s list on the industry published in November. Microsemi had about $825 million in revenue last year.
The Business Journal’s list estimates that OC’s 18 largest chipmakers saw local employment rise at a 3% clip to 4,843 workers in the last 12 months, as strong growth for cell phones, tablets and other mobile devices overrode a sluggish global economy.
That marked the third-straight year of job gains for the group.
California accounted for nearly 17% of the 244,800 chip jobs in the country, by far the most of any state. Texas, home to Dell Inc. and a burgeoning technology economy around Austin, was No. 2 with 28,800.
New President for TTM
Santa Ana-based TTM Technologies Inc. hired industry veteran Thomas Edman as president, a new position.
Edman brings more than 20 years of executive experience in the U.S. and Asia to TTM, the country’s largest printed circuit board maker.
Most recently he served as group vice president and general manager of the AKT Display Group at Santa Clara-based Applied Materials Inc. He previously was chief executive of Applied Films Corp., a Longmont, Colo.-based specialty glass maker that’s traded on the Nasdaq.
Edman, who has served as a TTM director since September 2004, will report to Chief Executive Kent Alder.
Honors for Meade
Irvine-based Meade Instruments Corp.’s latest line of telescopes garnered a nod for product of the year from Interstellarum Magazine, a leading astronomy publication based in Germany.
Meade designs and manufactures telescopes, binoculars and microscopes for the consumer market.
The company lost about $1.4 million on $21.5 million in revenues in its last fiscal year, ending in February.
