Kurt Kwok's blog

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We’ve all seen it happen many times, especially during major events such as the post-thanksgiving Black Friday, Cyber Monday and holiday sales: gadgets that were expensively priced for early adopters are suddenly affordable and accessible to the average person, which in turn spur a jump in demand. A 55-inch 3D LED TV, for example, that retailed for more than $3000 USD not too long ago now sells for about $1300 (and it comes with a 3D Blu-ray player and 4 sets of 3D glasses!) Similarly, a respectable laptop PC can cost less than $300 USD these days when they were more than $2000 just a couple years back. My 486 desktop computer used to be two grand! Aside from consumer electronics, we’re seeing similar trends of cost reduction in industries such as solar and LED lighting. A photovoltaic (PV) solar module that used to cost more than $5 per watt five years ago now goes for about $1.50 per watt. LED light bulbs for general lighting sold for more than $40 per bulb in hardware stores two years ago now sell for less than $20, and I am sure they will be comparably priced with today’s CFL bulb in the near future.

So how do these incredibly technologically advanced products become so affordable? The answer is technology and scale.Read more

Applied Materials has a long history of supporting arts in our neighborhood communities and this year we had the pleasure to collaborate with San Jose State University (SJSU) to design our 2011 Holiday E-Card.

A team of young, impressive, and highly creative students from the Animation/Illustration’s “Shrunken Head Man Club” within SJSU’s Art Department did an outstanding job of creating a family (literally) of semiconductor and LCD enabling products and made them come to life in a fun and whimsical way.

Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

On exhibit at CES - “Surface PCs"  - a PC with a very large unbreakable screen with touch panel capability.

At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, 140,000 attended to check out the 20,000 products being introduced. Luckily, it was a tradeshow, so they don’t actually sell you any of the gadgets, otherwise, I could've really burned a hole in my wallet. Here’s a quick recap of what I noticed at this year’s Gadgets "R" Us.Read more

The Aspen Ideas Festival has been an amazing opportunity to see what some of the greatest minds in the world are doing to help the world innovate and progress. Applied Materials’ focus was on how our high-tech manufacturing has the potential to re-energize the U.S. manufacturing sector (watch Applied Materials Chairman and CEO Mike Splinter’s talk here). Other topics discussed have ranged from encouraging consumers to be green to redefining the purpose and goals of higher education.Read more

Today Applied Materials’ CEO Mike Splinter took part in a well-known global thought-leader forum: The Aspen Ideas Festival. Dedicated to the notion that bringing the major policy, business and social leaders of the world together can lead to more meaningful discussion and action, Applied is proud to be able to take part in such a prestigious event.

Specifically, we’re excited to connect with people who, just like us, want to create a cleaner, brighter future for everyone.Read more