It is reported that after months of investigation of pricing collusion between Apple and electronic book publishers, the Justice Department is negotiating with publishers about possible solutions and is likely to file a lawsuit.
Antitrust officials have got down to investigating whether Apple and the five publishers has ever agreed to work together to raise the price of electronic books. A day earlier, the competition committee of the European Union said that it was carrying on an investigation of Apple and five publishers over whether they had made illegal agreements to restrict pricing on e-books.
Sharis A. Pozen, the acting director of antitrust division of the Justice Department set up a subcommittee to look into the electronic book industry in December. Ms.Pozen plans to leave Justice at the end of April. One person close to the investigation who has no authority to discuss the case in public but said that the department was hoping to reach a decision before she departed on whether to file a lawsuit against five publishers if a settlement was not reached by then.
When Apple introduced the iPad in 2010, Apple turned e-book selling into a so-called agency model, where the publisher sets the price and Apple takes a 30 percent cut. That was totally different from Amazon's strategy, where it bought books from publishers at nearly half the cover price and then set its own retail price, often offering sharp discounts.
While Apple told publishers that it was impossible for them to sell their e-books more cheaply elsewhere. Therefore, It leads to have the Justice Department believe that the publishers and Apple worked together to raise prices. According to the Journal, the companied denied the fact and European antitrust regulators are conducting a similar investigation.

This Article is from www.hqew.net ,click to see more .

Distributors Tell You Which Electronic Component Is in Shortage

Affected by current economic circumstance, the demand for product in stock is reducing. Now it's basically oversupply in  electronic component market  . But there is also partly shortage of some products. On one hand, the inventories of original manufacturers and agents are continuously reducing; on the other hand, wafer factories reduce the output thinking of the bad situation. So below are some analyses from the distributors.

Some power supply components may face the situation of extensive deliver time and shortage of goods because of full production capacity of upstream wafer OEM/ODM. Some optical components relating with broadcast communication equipment will most likely face the issue of supply tension. Some high-end components' most suppliers are still foreign enterprise and many domestic enterprises might not respond enough quickly to the latest domestic policies' changes.

In smartphone industry, technology's development results in the changes of some customers' design requirement. It may take some time in integrating product kinds. Also the uncertainty of customers' requirement might still exist. Some polymer capacitors and thin-film capacitors' supply may be a little tense resulted by extreme weather.

Hot Smartphones market leads the related downstream resources 'tense supply like capacitance touch control IC whose forecast and actual order are increased by double times and even several times in same period.

NXP's changing factory leads the shortage materials of SOT353/SOT363. The production problem of MMA8450 chip of Freescale? Semiconductor makes many manufacturers change to the replacing type of MMA7660, as a result MMA7660 is in shortage momently.

For now, it's unavoidable for the shortage of domestic components. The original manufacturers want to increase inventories but Foundry's production capacity is limited. This contradiction will become more and more obvious when market demands'increase.

Part of components 'tense are mainly caused by customers' concentrating using of some major advising type, which results in the lack of original factories' storage and the strain supply in a short time.

Five Hot Chips Today:   SM5021B ,  SN755870KPZT-P ,  UJA1023T ,  STW5093,  THC63LVDF84B

LA7016 - Electronic Switch IC

The  LA7016  is Japan's Sanyo produced a single two electronic switch integrated circuits, is a common, signal switching with the TV audio, music center and sound system. 1 LA7016 within the circuit block diagram and pin functions LA7016 Manifold pinout diagram as shown.

The IC is available in 8-pin single in-line package. The IC's pin function as follows. ① feet - Operating power supply voltage input. (2) feet - the first channel audio signal input. (3) feet - electronic switching circuit control signal input. The ④ feet - the road or second channel audio signal after the switch output. ⑤ feet - ground terminal. ⑥ feet - empty pin. ⑥ feet - empty pin. ⑦ feet - the second channel audio signal input. ⑧ feet - empty pin. Troubleshooting tips LA7016 IC electronic switch to select the first channel audio signal or the second channel audio signal, mainly its ③ feet of the control level is high or low to determine. Indirectly to the the LA7016 ① feet and ⑤ feet on the 12V voltage ③ foot plus high of ② pin voltage is 4.1 V, the ⑦ pin voltage is 5.8 V, The ④ feet level unchanged; to ③ feet plus low ② pin voltage is 4.2 V-the ⑦ pin voltage of 6 V, ④ pin voltage is constant. In the actual circuit, such as ③ pin control voltage unchanged, compared with the control system failure. Are subject to change and the signal can not switch ②, ⑦ pin input signal is normal, compared with IC damage.
Hot Chips Today:  INA139NA/250 ,        LQ10D32A,  ISP1581BD  , ISL22326WFV14Z  ,  J1337C

Lithium Batteries' Prices Is Gradually Reducing And Its Market Shares Climb up Steadily

Lithium batteries which had been in the second place because of its price now take a prompt development trend with the strictly lead storage battery industry was reorganized and its market shares sharply reduced .The concept stock of Lithium battery in the future will be detonated under the circumstance that Lithium battery technologies gradually take shape and its prices persistently dropped. Additionally the market research shows that the price of lithium batteries is reducing step by step and minimizes the gap between the prices of lead acid batteries, which will gradually accelerate the progress of lithium battery replacing lead acid battery in some field. In the future, lithium battery industries are facing the chancing of global investment opportunity.
 Although after years of development, China's lead storage battery industry system has basically taken shape and showed rapid development trends, and made quite a big breakthrough in the environmental protection. But the pollution problem during the production of lead storage battery industry is difficult to get solved well because of the numbers of manufacturers in this field, small scale, serious pollution, different quality level. In this way the battery market is inevitable to shrink gradually.
 Compared with the lead storage battery of which pollution problem can't be solved well, lithium battery was regarded as an ideal chemical energy with the advantages like small volume, great electric capacity and higher voltage, etc. It has been widely applied to mobile phones, laptops and other kinds of electronic products .At the same time, the continually expanding electric vehicle field will also bring bigger market development space to lithium ion battery.
 The market development speed of lithium storage battery had been quite slow before mainly because of its higher price compared with lead storage battery. But in recent years the price of lithium storage battery declined constantly and increased the market competitiveness of lithium batteries further. It is further showed that the development direction of new energy motor vehicle provide the guarantee for the rapid development of future's lithium battery plus the officially publishing of the twelfth five year special plan of electric vehicle.
  Now the country's new energy vehicles have been made considerable progress in both the technology progress and industrialization. The future lithium battery will occupy almost the half market of electric vehicle and the concept of lithium battery is about to be set off.
Top Five Chips Today:   2SK2837 ,      CXG1189AXR,   TDA12140H1/N100,  P1403EVG ,  F30U60DN

The Picture of 360 Cellphone Cooperating with Huawei Was Exposed

According to the news, Internet companies release smartphone one after another and the picture of 360 cellphone was exposed on the twitter.It's said that 360 cellphone has been put to pilot production.
A few days ago, the chairman of 360 reveals that they will release 360 cellphone which will adopt mainstream and high-end configuration with the price between 1000 and 2000. He also expresses the cellphone will install any popular software to users like QQ, Baidu search and all the software can be deleted. Now the picture of 360 cellphone was exposed on the twitter. And it's said 360 cellphone has been put to pilot production and will cooperate with Huawei. The cellphone will be 4.3 sizes high definition screen of 960x 540 resolution definition, dual-core 1.2G processor, and 80 billion pixels.
People hold different opinions about this trend of releasing phone for internet companies.
Internet companies release their own cellphone brand one after one. Alibaba combined with K-Touch brought out aliyun cellphone, Baidu released Streak Pro D43, Snoa released Bambook cellphone and NetEase will release high-end smartphone copoperating with noted cellphone brand manufacturers.
The CEO of Innovation Works thinks most of the internet companies will fail. Firstly he thinks internet and cellphone belong to two big different industry and different genes. Secondly he thinks most internet brands don't do well to cellphone, but make it worse. For internet companies, they make cellphone with the goal of installing their service not with the mission of users' need.
The senior consultant of Detecon International GmbH China region, Tan Yanming, thinks the next terminal will not be terminal manufacturers' own product. The trend will be cooperation- marketing.
For this, chairman of Qihoo 360 expresses 360 won't make cellphone itself but help cellphone manufacturers transform internet mode with 360's comprehension and resource of internet.
Hot Chips Today:   MBI5035GF  ,  FA8389A ,  XC3042A-PC84C ,  LPC2129FBD64 ,  301CNQ045

LAG673-monolithic Stereo Playback IC

The  LA7016  is Japan's Sanyo produced a single two electronic switch integrated circuits, is a common, signal switching with the TV audio, music center and sound system. 1 LA7016 within the circuit block diagram and pin functions LA7016 Manifold pinout diagram as shown.

12 Exist Problems in The LED Lighting Industry

There are 12 exist problems in the  led lighting industry.

1. LED color issues
Single LED applications basically does not exist the problem of chromatic aberration, but if a large number of LED to be put into use or a lamp with multiple LEDs, will highlight the problem of chromatic aberration to first say a group of lamps, if a glance the light of the inconsistent color, I want a happy mood they want to make a discount as LUXEON LED according to the color temperature is divided into eight military region, right in several residential and then in each Military Region, in a certain extent, a wide range of chromatic aberration control, but the same color area with a number of LED differences still exist, and this difference still can not run away to the naked eye provocation.

2. LED Insulation
(Insulation mentioned here refers to heat the substrate of the LED's positive and negative) would not say that we first discovered the insulation of the LED, but at least the big manufacturers questioned feel scared it is currently not resolved simply just take stop-gap measure, such as aluminum substrate to the insulation (the first aluminum plate did not do insulation, now almost all do) and we may think we can not understand. single LED is not insulated, has little effect on the series of many stars on a problem.

3. LED against pulse
This issue with the manufacturer remains controversial, in my actual application does exist, the main reaction in the cold pulse on power-on moment, the moment of a small number of LEDs in the cold state power breakdown or disconnect my opinion, is not static or high pressure due to (power voltage is within range)

4. LED light-emitting angle
Various manufacturers of LED lens package is not the same even if the same light angle (nominal angle), the effect is not the same, making the selection of poly mask difficult, to still not universal.

5. The hidden dangers of the potentially blinding LED
LED light points makes the center of brightness and super too concentrated, it is easy to hurt people's eyes, although some of the lighting manufacturers make efforts in this regard, but because of regulatory lag, only the moral problem of man.

6. LED heating problem
In theory, the LED is not very heat, but because of the immaturity of the current technology, the LED heat Yishi well known, I do not want to say.

7. The LED efficiency is low (luminous efficiency)
LED power conversion efficiency is too low (because there is no device to test, not giving specific figures).

8. The LED brightness is insufficient
Brightness is insufficient, making the current LED lighting industry can only play a supporting role, mainly used for decoration.

9. The LED light fades and life
Produced by the Mainland or Taiwan businessmen  LED light  fades and life problems more serious, without further ado, the big-name vendors, such as the LUXEON nominal 100,000 hours, I am afraid only of their own psychological clearly, together with the thermal solution is good or bad, drive the matches are likely to affect the LED light decline and life expectancy 100,000 hours is just a selling point to!

10. The LED drive power
Most of the drive lines are borrowed from the switching power supply from the course, a very small number of lines is dedicated to the LED driver, but the effect is basically the same, due to the LED need DC drive, take the constant current control, the drive circuit is very large and can not compared with electronic transformer, and the efficiency is relatively low, reaching 80% to operator (single has not yet reached). In addition, firms in pursuit of applicability, the claim that a drive belt to ten random access (one, two , ..... all OK), in fact, this is a misunderstanding, although it is a constant current, high starting voltage will often LED to death in an instant.

11. LED modeling is limited
Makes the shape of the LED lamps LED single-sided light-emitting characteristics, subject to certain restrictions.

12. The LED unit price is too high
An import 1W-3W LED should be about three dollars, but also made more than 10 blocks (of poor quality, intellectual property rights) and about a 6 LED lamps sold to the hands of consumers, almost more than 1000 yuan RMB , Do you want to buy a color TV or buy a lamp.

Hot Chips Today:  P1403EVG ,  F30U60DN ,  KA358,  TPS71319DRCR ,  WM8781

China Will Build MEMS Chip factory to Break the Oversea Monopoly

Semiconductor  chip manufacturing industry has a vital impact on IT electronic products industry.The core part of network equipment and servicer of CPU and memory all have semiconductor chip. Taiwan will always come to our mind when mentioning about chip foundry like TSMC and UMC. Taiwan is found to be the biggest semiconductor chip manufacturing base in the global at present when some relevant presses collected the shares of global semiconductor manufacturing in last year. So why does Taiwan become the global semiconductor chip manufacturing center?

Semiconductor chip industry includes design, manufacture and package, and then enters into the market. Some companies only do design without fab, which is usually called as fabless like ARM. But some companies only do fab without design like TSMC. Also other companies operate the whole processes like Intel, which is called IDM (Integrated Design and Manufacture).

IDM means the companies like Intel and TI do all the processes from design, manufacture, package test to sale.China is also actively building its chip factory creating the native Intel to reduce the expensive cost of exporting chip.

 MEMS , manufacture of microelectromechanical systems, mainly include micro mechanism, micro sensor, micro actuator and corresponding dispose circuit. In life, the most common MEMS are MEMS gyroscope of iPhone .The drop protection of HDD is also applied into MEMS. MEMS gyroscope and silicon film microphone all are greatly demanded in China market. The newly built MEMS chip foundry will low the cost of exporting chip of domestic enterprises because of the low labor cost. Also it may break the oversea monopoly in the future. 

Top Five Hot Chip Today:  INA139NA/250 , TCD2220 , LQ10D32A, ISP1581BD, K30A06J

LT3492 3000:1 LED dimming

This electronic circuit project is a simple Led dimming circuit based on the LT3492 triple output DC DC converter introduced by Linear Technology .LT3492 triple output DC DC converter is designed to operate as a constant-current source. The  LT3492  works buck, boost or buckboost mode and is ideal for driving LEDs. The switching frequency of the LT3492 can be programmed between 330KHz and 2.1 MHz .
The external PWM input provides 3000:1 LED dimming on each channel. The LT3492 has three channels and each channel has a built-in gate driver to drive an external LED-disconnect P-channel? MOSFET, allowing high dimming range. The output current range for each channel of the LT3492 is programmed with an external sense resistor.
The LT3492 use a CTRL pin to adjust the LED current either for analog dimming or over-temperature protection.

The main features of the LT3492 IC are : True Color PWM Dimming Delivers Up to 3000:1 Dimming Ratio , Built-In Gate Driver for PMOS LED Disconnect , Three Independent Driver Channels with 600mA , CTRL Pin Accurately Sets LED Current Sense Threshold Over a Range of 10mV to 100mV , ?Adjustable Frequency: 330kHz to 2.1MHz , Open LED Protection , Input Voltage Range from 3V to 30V.

Today Hot Chips: FDG901D, IS471FE, LM2678S-3.3/NOPB,RC5051M

The Rank of 2012 Global Electronic Components Distributors

According to the latest EETimes' incomplete statistics and rank, it lists the rank of global  electronic component  distributors, most of which are North America distributors. There are still many distributors which have large scale distributors without being in the list because of difficult textual research in global including China mainland since many distributors are not operated by listed company. But the rank higher data among the Top25 list still have high credibility.

Avnet and Arrow are each maintaining the first and second place as the two biggest electronic components distributors. This two companies share the alike financial index mostly, like the twins. There are no gaps between their business income growth rates, gross profit margin, share price, P/E Ratio and market shares. Purchasers can almost select any of them, which may have no big difference.

The distributors like Avnet and Arrow prefer to give up the low profit rate business not absorbing extra cost anymore. Distributors impersonally undertake many biggest and hardest problems. They are accused many times because of deficient insight, fake products and imbalance supply and demand. Many enterprises are bothered by those issues during the past circle of ups and downs. To cope with those problems, distributors invest capital to develop, purchase the solution plan to reinforce production rate, anti-counterfeiting test equipment and product life time management software. Actually many distributors' ability to solve supply chain problem is better than OEM and EMS provider.

But where is the global distribution market going? Whether there is existing global distribution market and if they are still seriously depending regional supports. There are no unified answers according to EBN/EE Times' latest global 25 biggest distributor ranks. Distribution market has already matured in North America and Europe, but still abstracted and unsure in other regions.

After intense merger and acquisition of North America market, at last the situation is a few big distributors dominating the whole industry and small size enterprise doing the leftover small business. In Japan, components distribution market is still subsidiary to its enterprise group system. Under this system, Japan's leading electronic OEM manufacturers decide on which distributors to grow stronger and which distributors can never break get rid of a small shop run by husband and wife.

In China, the market is more chaotic with thousands of distributors trying to build obviously leading position. But even in China, leading western distributor and WPG Holdings also make use of the relation with foreign equipment manufacturers and contractors to be the main role. Apparently, China market has already owned the integrated condition. Big distributor entering into this market of past ten years will at last accelerate this process.

Generally speaking, components distributors are in the core position in electronic supply chain like traffic commander delivering components and service from suppliers to contract manufacturers and OEM manufactures rapidly and efficiently. They are more and more important, but sometimes people still take them as small role.