IBM, worried the United States is losing its competitive edge, will financially back employees who want to leave the company to become math and science teachers.
The new program, being announced in concert with city and state education officials, reflects tech industry fears that U.S. students are falling behind peers from Bangalore to Beijing in the sciences.
Up to 100 IBM (IBM) employees will be eligible for the program in its trial phase. Eventually, Big Blue hopes many more of its tech-savvy employees -- and those in other companies -- will follow suit.
The goal is to help fill shortfalls in the nation's teaching ranks, a problem expected to grow with the retirement of today's educators.
Math and science are of particular concern to companies in many U.S. industries that expect to need technical workers but see low test scores in those subjects and waning interest in science careers.
While many companies encourage their employees to tutor schoolchildren or do other things to get involved in education, IBM believes it is the first to guide workers toward switching into a teaching career.
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Moore means less: The journey to ever smaller, faster and cheaper chips is slowing down and may put a big dent in sales and profits of the semiconductor sector and even the economy.
Until recently, chipmakers doubled the capacity of their products at the same size and cost every 18 to 24 months, helped by miniaturization and scale advantages, a phenomenon known as Moore's Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who predicted this trend as early as 1965.
Technically, his trend continues, with lithography machines steadily shrinking the detail on a chip from 130 nanometers in 2001 to 90 nm in 2003 to 65 nm 2005, and set to move to commercial chips with 45-nm detail in 2007.
Miniaturization boosts chip processing speed by cutting down on the distance the electric load must travel. But only the biggest chip producers are installing the latest and most expensive machines. This is effectively slowing Moore's Law.
The possible trend change has not gone unnoticed by analysts who track the chip industry, and they warn that a slowdown may have a major impact on sales growth of high-technology products, in particular of personal computers that traditionally have been replaced every three to four years to run the most advanced software programs, which require fast processors and big memory.
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Unite or die: Japan's fragmented electronics industry, under attack from low-cost Asian competitors and hamstrung by its own pride, must consolidate if it is to achieve respectable levels of profitability.
The operating profit margin of Japan's top 10 electronics makers in 2004 was a mere 2.8 percent on hundreds of billions of dollars of sales, and has been stuck at low levels for years.
Low profitability is due in large part to the move to digital products, which made it easier for new Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean rivals to compete.
Japan, however, has too many electronics makers to compete effectively. Ten Japanese mobile-phone makers, including electronics giants NEC, Matsushita, Sharp, Toshiba and Hitachi, held a combined global market share of only 10 percent in the last business year, while none had more than 2 percent.
A shake-out is needed and Japanese electronics companies must merge or work together, said Fumiaki Sato, an electronics industry analyst at Deutsche Bank in Tokyo.
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Determined Deutsche: Deutsche Telekom has decided against selling its T-Mobile USA unit and will instead work to expand the U.S. wireless unit.
Only last month, CEO Kai-Uwe Ricke said he was keeping "all options open" regarding the future of T-Mobile USA, sustaining speculation that it could be sold.
The speculation focused on the U.S. subsidiary's lack of a 3G network and entrenched competition from bigger rivals like Sprint and Verizon.
Ricke said then that Deutsche Telekom (DT) would decide by the end of 2005 how it will proceed with costly investments in a 3G network, either bidding alone or gathering partners for a joint bid to operate one.
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Compiled by Keith Axline. AP and Reuters contributed to this report.
