Already last week there were reports about AMD's plans to further invest into its fab in East Germany's "Silicon Saxony" in Dresden. Now it is official. The chip manufacturer will invest 2.5 bln EUR. Start of the investment is planned for end of 2007 and will include production equipment for a monthly volume of 45'000 300mm wafers ready by end of 2008. AMD already employs some 3'000 people in Dresden. This is certainly great news for the area and reflects both the current success of AMD and the importance of its Dresden facility.

Merger rumors are the news headlines this weekend. Shortly after a private equity partner (Blackstone) entered Deutsche Telekom as a minority shareholder, rumors have spread that they are working on plans for a takeover of BT. BT has no mobile TV business and could be indeed a takeover target.

The other rumor is about Microsoft already being in merger talks with eBay. Target here is clearly Google who is challenging both MS and eBay. Google has been "forcing" eBay into a Yahoo! partnership recently. If MS and eBay were to join forces, Skype would suddenly be reporting to MS. What would happen to the recent Yahoo/eBay deal is pretty unclear though. Internet business is super fast and no-one knows what's next...

Analysts are still discussing what the reasons for the Vonage IPO flop

might have been. I think Vonage's simple formula: <Get as many customers as you can regardless of how much it costs>, is not enough to attract investors. Vonage has yet to have a profitable quarter and quite frankly I thought this kind of IPO - that is built purely on the infamous hockey stick growth curve - were history: but obviously not.

The positive could be, though, that this flop will discourage others who might have had similiar ideas: Collect lots of VC money, hype up the business potential with lots of marketing, earn 100 million USD on expenses of 200 million USD and then start believing the story yourself. Often the good old "solid growth and profit over many quarters" IPO criteria are better. Now Skype and lots of telcos will have a smile on their face or at least be more relaxed - the latter are anyway in a different game: bundled services (triple- and quadruple-play), with one phone and one telecom/datacom service bill in mind. Vonage will be squeezed between both of these groups and has yet to show any profit. The IPO brought in 500 million USD though, so still a lot of marketing dollars to spend and that's at least good news for ad space sellers such as the London Underground, where you will probably now find even more of the Vonage ads. So to sum it up the British way: the rest of the money might also go down the tube...

Infineon has announced a new record low bill of material cost of just 16 USD for a complete mobile phone using its newest GSM chipset, which now also has power management integrated.

According to Heise Online by end of 2005 the cost was still at 20 USD. Target markets are the ultra low-cost areas of the world: India, China, Africa and South America. If the chip is indeed ahead of other competitors and available to manufacturers soon then Infineon might have a great opportunity here.

History in semiconductor developments has shown, though, that the next cost-performance record might just be around the corner...