Santa Ana’s Ingram Micro Inc., the biggest distributor of technology products, computers and consumer electronics, added Irvine-based Broadcom Corp.’s chief executive to its board.
Scott McGregor is set to join Ingram’s board this month as an independent director.
“As the leader of one of the most respected semiconductor companies in the technology industry, Scott will be an excellent addition to the board,” said Dale R. Laurance, In-gram’s chairman.
“Ingram Micro will benefit from his nearly 30 years of technology experience, ranging from software development to semiconductor design, as well as his valuable expertise as a corporate chief executive and director,” he said.
Ingram Micro is the largest local company of any type by revenue. It sees yearly sales of more than $30 billion and had a recent market value of about $2.6 billion.
Chip Sales
Worldwide chip sales are predicted to grow by 28% to $290 billion in 2010, according to a projection by the Semiconductor Industry Association, a San Jose-based industry group.
Chip sales are expected to level off to moderate growth in the next two years.
The forecast projects 6% sales growth in 2011 to $309 billion, followed by 3% growth in 2012 to $318 billion.
“Healthy demand in all major product sectors and in all geographic markets drove sales of semiconductors to record levels in the first four months of 2010,” said former association president George Scalise.
“While the year-on-year growth rate will moderate through the remainder of the year, we expect modest sequential sales growth in line with historic seasonal patterns,” he said.
Of course, the chip industry’s nearly 30% sales boost is coming off a stunningly bad 2009, when the industry muddled through the worst downturn since the technology bubble burst in 2001.
Still, that’s good news for the county’s biggest chipmakers, which include Irvine’s Broadcom and Microsemi Corp., and others.
In an announcement last month, the SIA named Brian Toohey as its president.
Toohey, 42, succeeds Scalise, who last year announced his plans to retire.
Toohey most recently was a senior vice president at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a lobbying group for drug makers. He’s set to start the post this week.
Startup Names Chairman
Irvine’s Endeavors Technologies Inc., a software startup that spun out of the University of California, Irvine, named Osman Kent as its chairman.
A Silicon Valley veteran, Kent also holds an undisclosed stake in the company.
Endeavors makes what’s called streaming virtualization software that allows companies to run big software programs virtually. It helps them cut down on data storage costs.
Endeavors spun out of a government-funded think tank at UC Irvine that began in the late 1990s.
The group received a $4 million grant from the Defense Department to work on a project for the Pentagon.
The work resulted in several patents for streaming software applications.
The company later nabbed another $25 million in funding from Britain’s Endeavour Ventures Ltd. (no relationship to Endeavors Technologies) and other sources.
Endeavors’ product is called Application Jukebox. It does a number of things including application streaming, virtualization and cloud computing.
Kent is known in the chip and graphics industries. He was the cofounder and chief executive of Milpitas-based 3Dlabs Inc., a maker of graphics chips and cards.
Much of the company’s technology was used to create special effects in movies, such as “Titanic,” “The Matrix” and others.
3Dlabs went public in 1996 and, at its peak, had a market value of nearly $1 billion.
It was taken private in a $170 million deal by Creative Technology Ltd.
Endeavors has some 25 workers here and doesn’t disclose financials.
Bits and Pieces
Lake Forest’s GoScan Inc., a startup maker of software that helps companies cut down on paper, was named a “top emerging software vendor” by CRN.com, the website of trade journal Computer Reseller News. It makes scanning software that allows files to be sent to a server and encrypted … The founders of Irvine’s Blizzard Entertainment Inc. were honored with the Helena Modjeska Cultural Legacy Award. Blizzard was started by Allen Adham, Michael Morhaime (who’s chief executive) and Frank Pierce in the early 1990s. The three were college buddies from the University of California, Los Angeles … Irvine-based flat television seller Vizio Inc. inked a deal with Hulu LLC, in which Vizio’s customers can subscribe to Hulu Plus, a monthly service that beams TV shows to their Internet-connected TVs. For about $10 a month, Hulu Plus offers current season episodes, full series and reruns of hit TV shows from ABC, Fox and NBC on demand.
