Cymer Sees Growth in Chip-Making, Northrop Grumman Combat Drone Takes First Flight, TurboTax Launches Mobile Tax-Filing App, & More San Diego BizTech News

The innovation economy took center stage last week in San Diego, where new innovations were announced in mobile apps, unmanned aircraft, and new technology platforms developed for smart grid operating systems. We’ve got it wrapped for you here.

—Diego-based Cymer (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CYMI]]), which is considered a bellwether for the semiconductor industry, said during a fourth-quarter conference call last week that several of its chip-making customers had recently raised their capital expenditure projections for 2011. Cymer makes advanced, deep-ultraviolet lasers for use in photolithography to make chips. “We believe this increase in ‘capex’ investment will translate into continued growth as the year proceeds,” CEO Bob Akins told investors, analysts, and journalists.

—Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman (NYSE: [[ticker:NOC]]), which operates an engineering and development center for unmanned aircraft in San Diego, said its stealthy X-47B unmanned combat air system (UCAS) successfully flew its long-delayed first flight at Edwards Air Force Base on Friday. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is intended to serve as a carrier-based combat strike aircraft.

—-I profiled Fluorotronics, an 11-year-old startup in Vista, CA, founded by Russian immigrant Olga Sharts to commercialize a specialized type of laser spectroscopy that is tuned to the unique spectroscopic signal of carbon-fluorine bonds. Such bonds are found only in manmade products, including pharmaceutical products. Carbon-fluorine bonds also are used to make Teflon and other advanced materials, including microelectronics, semiconductors, chemicals, and aerospace materials.

—Wade described how innovation and entrepreneurship have become the bywords for efforts in various quarters to drive economic resurgence in the United States. He noted the Startup America initiative launched by the White House, an unexpected source of funding for the Y Combinator venture incubator program, an expansion of the TechStars operation, and much more.

—Mountain View, CA-based Intuit (NASDAQ: [[ticker:INTU]]) has developed more than 15 mobile apps that are focused on

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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.