Digital Video Experts React to Google’s WebM, Motorola Out Scouting for Spinoff Headquarters, BakBone Cuts ColdSpark, & More San Diego BizTech News

leading technology experts in the region.

—Cymer’s David Knowles told me the TCZ display division he heads has installed its first system for making ultrathin OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) displays for an unnamed customer in South Korea. Knowles said the San Diego company plans to deliver its second OLED manufacturing system, which cost about $10 million apiece, to another unnamed customer in China this Fall.

—Members of the Tech Coast Angels invested $1.6 million—and helped induce another $9.9 million in venture investments—in five startup deals during the first three months of 2010. TCA Chairman Richard Sudek said that investors’ mood seems to be improving, even though the pace of angel investing remained sluggish.

—So much for this idea: San Diego’s BakBone Software, which acquired ColdSpark a year ago for $15.9 million in cash and stock, shut down the business and said it is taking a $300,000 charge in personnel-related expenses and writing off $12.6 million in non-cash goodwill. A BakBone spokeswoman never responded to my phone call or e-mail inquiries concerning the number of layoffs. Chris Mellor of the Register provided the most incisive, or should I say, eviscerating, analysis of the move.

—Zeebo, the San Diego video game console maker, has raised $8 million in a combination of equity, debt, and loans convertible to stock. Zeebo, which is backed by wireless giant Qualcomm and Brazilian video-game developer Tectoy S.A., is selling its equipment now in Brazil and Mexico.

—Qualcomm is opening its second multimillion-dollar R&D facility in China—this time in Shanghai—in a move that underscores the importance of the huge Chinese market to the San Diego wireless technology provider.

Pages: Page 1, Page 2

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.