The weak US economy and poor consumer sentiment as a result of US subprime mortgage mess have taken a severe toll on its tech sector. The S&P technology sector has plunged almost 13% so far in 2008. More and more US tech companies are announcing restructuring and massive layoff. Last week, US cellphone and telecommunication maker giant Motorola announced that it will cut 2,600 jobs worldwide including 700 jobs in Singapore as a result of Motorola’s decision to end mobile manufacturing operations in Singapore by the end of 2008. The layoffs are part of a previously announced $500 million cost-reduction initiative (Ref).

The semiconductor sector is not spared either. According to Gartner, worldwide semiconductor sales were $18.7B in February, about $1B (~5%) below the firm’s expectations (Ref). Gartner also reduced its forecast for total semiconductor market growth in 2008 to 3.4% from 6.2% (Ref). On the same token, iSuppli also reduced its outlook for the NAND flash sector in 2008 by a full two-thirds. It’s projection for global NAND flash memory revenues dropped to 9% for 2008 from 29% (Ref). Last year, Dell announced plans to cut 8,800 jobs, or 10 percent of its work force. So far, the company had cut 5,500 jobs and is going to cut another 1,000 more this quarter (Ref). Aviza Technology announced last week that it will undergo a significant restructuring of its global workforce and products, and it will layoff approximate 15% worldwide workforce (Ref). Yesterday, AMD announced that it will lay off 10% of its staff by the end of Q3 (Ref). Given the current financial market woes and credit crunch, we believe more US tech companies will announce similar restructuring and layoff in the weeks to come.

Intel’s Developer Forum (IDF) is becoming a high profile premier event in the semiconductor industry and receiving a lot of internet publicity. The event provides a good glimpse of the forthcoming digital technology that would shape the future.

Following the successful Intel spring IDF event at Beijing last year, this year Intel spring IDF was held at Shanghai last week. The key theme for this event was “unleashing the internet with mobile devices” or more aptly in Chinese ” 芯动力，新世界” and the focus was on mobile internet devices (MIDs). Intel is apparently going all out to grab a bite on this new market by introducing new enabling technologies for MIDs such as Atom processors and solid-state drives (SSD) in the coming months. These devices are all designed to have very small footprint and low power. Other major processor companies such as AMD, Nvidia and Via Technologies are all vying for the MID market as well.

In the following videos, you can replay most of the highlights in this Intel Shanghai IDF. In these videos, Intel Ultra Mobility VP Anand Chandrasekher shared the latest development on Atom processors. He held up the smallest chipsets for Atom processors known as Moorestown which he called “the heart” of future mobile Internet devices. Atom processors are also going to used in Intel’s low cost PC, the classmate PC. Patrick Gelsinger, Intel’s senior vice president and Digital Enterprise Group general manager in Shanghai, talked on next generation processors for server and desktop, “Nehalem” and “Dunnington”. David Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager of Intel Corporation’s Mobility Group, shared on the outlook of solid state disks & a common chip architecture.