EE Daily News: May 2010

It took only 18 months for Android to overtake the iPhone in the smartphone market, at least according to some reports, and now several events in the past week foretell a similar invasion about to take place in the emerging tablet market:

Marvell got a lot of attention in the blogosphere and in twitterville when they showed their prototype for an Android-based Moby tablet at the Netbook Summit on May 25th. Apparently reporters from Engadget had missed the earlier presentation of this device at the CTIA Wireless Show in March. I took the picture above at Pepcom's Mobile Focus event for press and analysts on March 23. The Netbook Summit discussion was followed by the news that the "One Laptop Per Child" project would be adopting the Moby tablet, which has a targeted cost of less than $100.

During an investor conference with Barclay Capital, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha hinted at a "7 to 10 inch" Android tablet that could be forthcoming as part of their relationship with Verizon Wireless and their DROID campaign.The tablet above, from Innovative Converged Devices (ICD) was shown in Verizon's demo of LTE technology at this past January's Consumer Electronics Show. This device is based on NVIDIA's Tegra processor. Since the tablet was shown in a display connected with a Motorola LTE modem, Fierce Wireless has attributed the ICD tablet to Motorola.
Pre-announcements are out for next week's Computex Show in Taiwan. I expect numerous Android devices to be on display there. VIA Technologies, and their subsidiary WonderMedia have sent out announcements of a gallery of five Android tablets that they will be showing, including the Eken M001 and M003:

The wave of Android tablets should hit the U.S. market later this year. To be successful, the Android Market must be opened up to allow non-smartphone apps. Google has presented just that at the Google I/O Developer's Conference last week. Along with the development of Google TV and the release of Android 2.2 (Froyo), the presentation included an early peek at the ability to browse the Android Market from the desktop - with over-the-air download of applications and content.

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This concludes the results of my small survey of the EDA community regarding the question:

Do you think that Cadence's purchase of Denali will provide a benefit for designers?

In my previous post, I showed that a number of early votes came in from the participants in the acquisition, but (perhaps surprisingly) they were not exactly 100% positive.

Cadence 5 - YES, 1 - NO
Denali 1 - YES
EDA Competitors 2 - NO

After eliminating the votes from companies that have the greatest vested interest in the acquisition (i.e. the participants and their most direct competitors) a total of 43 votes represented the worldwide EDA respondents.

Although the sample may be small and unscientific, the map above shows that it truly was a worldwide response.

Countries represented:

U.S.
Canada
Taiwan
India
UK
Germany
France

~~Over the one week period that results were collected, the NO votes just edged out the YES votes... well by a NOse... 22-to-21.~~

(Edited on May-24, 2010 to correct error in transferring votes from survey)

After this post, I found an error in my original tally. The actual result is 23-NO and 20-YES.

While many of the votes came from unidentifiable locations, it is perhaps interesting to note that two of the NO votes originated from top tier semiconductor companies; one a company "in the Top 10" by 2009 revenue, and another from a company in the "Top 25". There was one identifiable semi company on the YES side, and that company currently ranks well outside the Top 25.

CONCLUSIONS

This obviously wasn't intended as a rigorous exercise in statistical polling, but more of a "taking of the pulse" to gauge EDA community opinion in the aftermath of Cadence's purchase of long-independent Denali. While participants were self-selected, that means (I think) that they represent people who really care.

What conclusions can be drawn? I'd say that the split vote speaks for itself. Not all bad.. and not all good. The respondents clearly don't see this as something revolutionary or different than other EDA acquisitions, but they also don't see it as all overwhelmingly bad either.

On May 13, 2010 Cadence Design Systems announced their intention to purchase Denali Software Inc. for $315M.

The history of the EDA industry is replete with acquisitions, and the most significant innovations have generally come from the startups. This acquisition is noteworthy for several reasons:

The purchase price, $315 million for a company with $43 million in revenue, is large as these purchases go. As a comparison, in 2005 Synopsys purchased Nassda, which had similar revenue, for an "aggregate consideration" of approximately $192 million. (With a net that was much less since Nassda reported cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of $101.4 million).When Synopsys purchased Synplicity in 2008, for $188M, the company more than $70M of revenue. I'm sure you can find many other examples as well.
Denali has long been held up as the model of a "profitable independent company" in the EDA industry.
The EDA industry obsession with the infamous annual Denali Party at DAC. If you do a search on Twitter, you'll find that many more tweets about the party than about the acquisition. Apparently there has been a bit of a concern that the party would not happen now.

I launched an online poll shortly after the announcement of the acquisition. The two parties involved in the acquisition were quick to respond, and competitors and users soon followed. I'd like to invite more users to take the survey, which you can find my clicking here. The poll is anonymous, except for IP addresses.

The survey asks just 1 simple question: Do you think that Cadence's purchase of Denali will provide a benefit for designers?

As you can see, 6 votes came in from Cadence IP addresses, with 5 YES but 1 NO! In fact, the 1 NO vote came in before all the others. One Denali employee also voted YES. Two competitors of Cadence-Denali, who will remain nameless, also voted NO.

My experience with surveys in general is that they are difficult to get response to, so the small number's don't surprise me. This acquisition doesn't seem to have a very long tail in the twitter/blogosphere but if you have an opinion I invite you to add your vote.

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