Molex provides Apple with products like multimedia connectors, or as they’re more commonly known: “Firewires.”

Molex creates electronic parts like connectors, fiber-optic products, antennas and sockets for a variety of verticals including data and computing, telcos and automotive. The company reported gross profitability at more than $1.06 billion in 2013, down half a percentage point from 2012. With the deal struck, Molex joins the Koch Industries portfolio, which already includes Georgia-Pacific LLC, The Matador Cattle Company, and more resource-based ventures bearing the Koch name like Koch Minerals, LLC and Koch Pipeline Company, LP.

Koch Industries and Molex share similar origin stories, as Koch Industries is led by brothers David and Charles Koch and Molex, until recently, was owned and operated by the Krehbiel family.

Per the deal, Koch now owns all Molex’s outstanding common, Class A, and Class B stock––and laid down a pretty penny more for the shares than they traded for the previous Friday. (Stocks of the common, A and B variety are distinguished by associated voting rights.) According to the release, Koch dropped capital at a 42 percent equity increase (up 31 percent for common stock, 56 percent for Class A common stock). Obviously, premiums make deals more appealing to investors (get a brush-up here.)

It is widely accepted that most companies are merged with a premium over their stock value, around 20%. Molex, with 42 percent, seems in line with recent acquisitions which according to pundits and financial sources are higher in 2013 than usual.

Molex reports net revenues at 3.6 billion worldwide in 2013, 3.8 percent more than last year. The company, based in Lisle, IL, chose this moment for acquisition to reward longtime supporters and employees. “After 75 years this was a difficult decision, but our board of directors and our family believe that this transaction…provides outstanding benefits for all our stakeholders,” said Fred Krehbiel, co-chairman of the Molex board in the release. “The transaction is expected to provide substantial opportunities for our worldwide employees, many of whom have spent much of their working lives at Molex and are responsible for the company’s long term success.” Following the deal, the Krehbiels will give up their stock and positions and leave the company to Koch.

The news makes no mention of future product releases or jumps into new sectors––only of a continued “track record of growth and investment in people, innovation and technology,” says Martin Slark, CEO and vice chairman of Molex in the release.

Documents Molex filed with the SEC say the company’s sales to Apple account for 14 percent of net revenue in 2013, though they’re not Apple’s only connector provider. Risks to the business, also listed in the papers, provide clues to reasons for an acquisition now. According to the company, Molex faces intense competition, industry consolidation, a dependency on new products and pressure to lower prices.

Though its hard to imagine an electronic parts producer struggling in a digital age, the industry brings its own challenges. And a partnership with Koch could give Molex room to work, so that they won’t have to innovate under the gun (and on the cheap) in a capital-intensive and crowded industry. “Connector Supplier” ranks Molex third on the top 10 list of connector manufacturers, as it pulled more than $3.5 billion in sales two years running (2011-2012). In past months, the industry’s looked a little bleak; but hopefuls wait for a 4.4 percent overall connector sales increase before end of full year 2013.

As the Krehbiels bow out, the Kochs are poised to take Molex to new heights. Though Molex has already scaled international (they have 41 manufacturing locations in 15 countries; and just, 29 percent of its 2013 net revenues stem from the Americas), Koch Industries’ money, resources and guidance will help further penetrate their markets. Currently, Molex has captured about 8 percent of the connector industry: a number they’re looking to increase.

“Once the transaction is completed, Molex will be even better positioned to navigate an evolving industry,” the company said in an employee FAQ about the deal. “With Koch behind us, we will be able to protect and grow our market share, ensure continuity for customers, provide growth opportunities for our employees, and maintain the overall stability of the business.”

Implications of the deal may affect Apple on the political, rather than technological, front. Already, news sources have penned headlines that poke at Koch Industries’ leadership’s politics; yesterday, the Daily Beast ran an article titled, “Get Ready to Support the Kochs, Liberal Apple Fans.”

As to business, it’s going on as usual for now, Molex says. Until the year’s out and the deal’s closed, “we need all employees to remain focused on their day-to-day responsibilities,” the employee FAQ states.

California became the third state to legalize self driving cars, thanks to a special visit to Google’s Mountainview headquarters by Governor Jerry Brown, who signed the legislation after taking a “test drive” in a Google driverless vehicle, according to Tecca. Though Google has had robot cars on California roads since 2010, and the practice has always been officially legal as there was no legislation to prevent it, the state passed the law in order to make it official before any anti-self driving legislation reared its ugly head in the state.

Though California was the first place Google tested the cars, Nevada and Florida beat the sunshine state to make the practice officially legal. Its fleet of a dozen robot cars has logged more than 300,000 miles. The only accidents that have ever taken place with the self driving cars were the fault of another driver.

“Today we’re looking at science fiction becoming tomorrow’s reality — the self-driving car,” Brown said. “Anyone who gets inside a car and finds out the car is driving will be a little skittish, but they’ll get over it.”

Google’s cars use sensors, cameras and computers to navigate traffic, and are programmed to establish a boundary between themselves and other obstacles at all times. A human driver remains at the controls to take over if the system should fail. Google touts that the cars are far more safer than a human driver, which can get drunk, fall asleep behind the wheel or simply not pay attention.

“I think the self-driving car can really dramatically improve the quality of life for everyone,” Google co-founder Sergey Brin stated. “I expect that self-driving cars will be far safer than human-driven cars.”

Some, however, have argued that California has adopted self driving cars too quickly, and that liability issues first need to be sorted out.

“Unfortunately this legislation lacks any provision protecting an automaker whose car is converted to an autonomous operation vehicle without the consent or even knowledge of that auto manufacturer,” the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers said in a statement.

The law calls for the California Department of Motor Vehicles to set regulations for self driving vehicles by 2015.

What does this mean for life on the road? Not much for a while, aside from the occasional robot car sighting in a California traffic jam. When Nevada laws were passed, officials stated the most likely use for the cars would first be self-driving taxis or pizza delivery vehicles. All in all, however, our great grandchildren might get to skip driver’s ed. Wired predicts that drivers licenses will be a thing of the past by 2040. The publication noted that Audi and BMW are working on similar technology that could be on the road in a few years. ABI Research claims car companies have spent more than $10 billion on self driving cars in 2011 alone, expected to jump to $130 billion by 2016.

The company recently announced the milestone on its blog, as well as the policy change of two people per vehicle. Google employees can now begin taking the cars to work solo, as they’ve been deemed safe for commute, though wide range public adoption is still has “a long road ahead,” Google cautioned on its blog.

The technology will first need to learn to handle snow, construction cones, and other “tricky conditions” hazardous to teenagers and robots alike. Still, the announcement means someday you’ll finally be able to finish “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” cover to cover in rush hour traffic without worry about the bumper in front of you.

“This is an important milestone, as it brings this technology one step closer to every commuter,” Google stated in its blog. “One day, we hope this technology will enable people to be more productive in their cars.”

In 2010, the company first announced its self driving cars that use sensors, radar and computers to navigate through traffic. Google touts that the cars are actually safer than human drivers as the cars are programmed to establish a boundary of obstructions around themselves at all times. Last February, Nevada passed regulations allowing self driving cars, though it will likely be years before they are available for the general public. Early use cases will most likely involve self-driving taxi cabs or pizza delivery robots instead of your neighborhood teenager.

Still, Google engineers have apparently grown up in the age of “The Terminator,” and aren’t leaving anything to chance. Human drivers remain at the controls “to take over if needed.” Judging by human behavior, however, we’re better off leaving it to computers to drive us around, since they don’t drink, fall asleep at the wheel, or run their fellow commuters down in a fit of road rage.

Nevada’s DMV is currently developing licensing procedures for car manufacturers to test self-driving cars in Nevada, Bruce Breslow, director of Nevada’s DMV, told Physorg. The state’s Governor Brian Sandoval even tried out one of Google’s self-driving Toyota Prius in July.

Back in late 2010, Google dropped the bombshell that its self-driving robot cars had clocked in over 140,000 miles of driving in California with only occasional human control, and seven cars drove over 1,000 miles with no human assistance. The cars have driven from Google’s Mountain View campus to its Santa Monica office, and right on down to Hollywood Boulevard to trade parking spaces with the stars. The cars even managed to drive San Francisco’s Lombard Street, one of the steepest and curviest streets in the nation that’s also a continual tourist traffic jam.

Only one accident was reported during the testing, and a human behind the wheel of another car was entirely at fault.

The cars use radar, sensors and computers to navigate and avoid obstructions, with a human driver always ready to take over the wheel if the self-driving computer happened to recently stream “The Terminator” on Netflix. Google received a patent for its self-driving cars in December.

The technology was developed by a team of engineers from the DARPA Challenges, a line of robot vehicle races organized by the US government.

The cars are designed to prevent traffic accidents. Google argues that computer driven cars can drastically reduce the more than 1.2 million lives lost every year in highway accidents by as much as half.

“This technology has been a passion of mine for years because it will help save lives, help lots of people who have difficulty driving, and reduce congestion on our roads,” Google’s Larry Page blogged about the project. “…Using technology to improve safety on our roads will make the world a better place.”

As robots make the roadways safer, cars can also weigh less, reducing fuel consumption.

“While this project is very much in the experimental stage, it provides a glimpse of what transportation might look like in the future thanks to advanced computer science,” Sebastian Thrun, a Google software engineer, explained on Google’s blog. “And that future is very exciting.”

Google had suggested automated taxis or self-driving delivery services as possible initial uses.

Self-driving cars being tested will have red plates, Physorg reported. The cars will likely have green plates when the service is available to the general public.

Don’t expect designated driving robots tomorrow, however. Even the most optimistic predictions place the technology’s at least eight years away from hitting the mainstream. A lot more needs to be tested, including the legal system. If a robot does get in a crash, for instance, who’s responsible, the driver optimizing technology or the company that programmed the faulty R2D2?

“We ask the court to stop selling and marketing for Apple’s iPad in China. We also demand an apology,” said Xie Xianghui, a lawyer representing the Proview Technology Shenzhen told China Daily.

It’s an interesting twist in a country where patent infringement can be as common as bootleg DVDs. Both companies claim the iPad as a trademark, but the Chinese company claims it has had rights to the trademark since 2000 or 2001. The company requests a stop to iPad sales in China due to the patent infringement as well as a fine for damages.

Apparently Proview Taiwan, an affiliate of the Shenzhen that did not legally represent it, sold the iPad trademark to IP Application Development, a UK-based company that then sold the rights to Apple, apparently unaware the parent company had not authorized the sale.

Apple sued Proview Shenzhen last year to legally gain the right to the iPad name, but lost the lawsuit.

Ecommerce spending improved 13 percent in 2011 compared to 2010, with online shopping surging 14 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter, according to a recent research report from Comscore.

What’s more, a record 52 percent of those transactions included free shipping. The previous record was Q4 of 2010 at 49 percent.

“The fourth quarter of 2011 capped off what was yet another strong year for online retail, one in which every quarter achieved double-digit increases versus the prior year,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “In the face of continuing uncertainty regarding the U.S. economy, consumers increasingly went online for their shopping needs. Price and convenience continue to be the critical value drivers for e-commerce, and unless those conditions change we can expect to see more channel-shifting to online in 2012 and perhaps even an acceleration in the current growth trend.”

That fourth quarter growth splurged due to 10 individual days surpassing $1 billion in online spending, led by Cyber Monday (Nov. 28) at $1.251 billion, followed by Dec. 5 at $1.78 billion, and Green Monday (Dec. 12) at $1.133 billion.

The report also noted that martphones continue to play an increased role in online shopping, with consumers researching products online even while physically shopping at a store.

While analysts have been predicting that cloud computing will reshape the server and storage market, actual adoption remains limited, the report stated.

Plus, in leveraging financial woes, many companies have adopted policies that encourage employees to use their own devices, which are increasingly Apple products, as they are easy to use and set up. With more employees doing work on Apple products, companies will need to center their technology plans more around Apple than less pressing cloud computing infrastructure as a service needs.

Cloud computing may be the next big change, but its a huge one that companies may be slow to adapt. In the second quarter of 2011, only 14 percent of the companies surveyed by Forrester planned to implement cloud computing infrastructure into their ecosystems, and only three percent were making those changes in 2011. Forrester reasons the economy of 2012 will only place greater pressure on companies, forcing businesses to put less emphasis on implementing infrastructure as a service within the cloud.

Forrester estimated that Apple sold $6 billion in Macs as well as $6 billion in iPads to businesses in 2011, despite not targeting the corporate market. As an easy to use technology that requires less investment than a string of computers, the iPad can be a cost effective tool for businesses. Forrester predicts that Apple will continue to increase sales to the business sector over 2012, selling $9 billion in Macs as well as $10 billion in iPads to businesses and governments in 2012.

While the cloud is eventually coming, the iPad is creating greater change in the company boardroom.

The use of moble apps continue to rise in popularity, with the average user spending 94 minutes a day on them, an increase of 13 minutes since the firm’s initial report back in June, Flurry stated in a recent blog post.

Web usage, on the other hand, dipped from 74 minutes per day back in June to 72 minutes per day in December of 2011.

And Facebook is likely increasing the difference.

“Our analysis shows that people are now spending less time on the traditional web than they did during the summer 2011,” said Charles Newark-French, Flurry’s senior marketing manager. “This drop appears to be driven largely by a decrease in time spent on Facebook from the traditional web. In June 2011, the average Facebook user spent over 33 minutes on average per day on the website. Now, that number is below 24 minutes. Time spent on the web without Facebook has grown at a modest rate of 2 percent between June 2011 and December 2011.”

Consumers are also using apps more frequently, with users spending more time on apps and the web combined as they become more connected. Growth in the length of time spent in each session is also waning, from 23 percent between December and June of 2010 to 15 percent in December and June of 2011.

“The growth is predominately being driven by an increase in the number of sessions, as opposed to longer session lengths,” Newark-French said. “Consumers are using their apps more frequently.”

How are these mobile app users spending their time? Gaming and socializing, with games taking up 49 percent of mobile app time and social networking apps taking up 30 percent.
These trends will only be heightened by mobile device purchases over the coming year.

“Flurry estimates that the cumulative number of iOS and Android devices activated will surge past 1 billion,” Newark-French said. “According to IDC, over 800 million PCs were sold between 1981 and 2000, making the rate of iOS and Android smart device adoption more than four times faster than that of personal computers.”

Magnetic RAM chips work like permanent flash memory chips but with the speed of dynamic RAM. The MRAM use the spin or directional facing of a magnet to store data digitally.

Based in Chandler, Arizona and a spin-off of Freescale Semiconductor, Everspin serves more than 300 active users with 100-plus MRAM products in three major markets, and secured 250 design wins for its products in 2011.

Serving the industrial, energy, and automotive and transportation markets, Everspin’s growth was largely spurred by the enterprise storage, server and networking segment. Using MRAM chips in enterprise storage reduces system down time and simplifies system design more cost-effectively by eliminating the need for external components such as capacitors, super capacitors, batteries and resistors.

Dell and the LSI Corporation use the MRAM chips for critical data storage in RAID systems, servers and routers which demand reliable and enduring fast non-volatile memories to reliably preserve metadata in the event of power outages. Dell uses MRAM as a journal memory in its RAID storage systems, while LSI uses MRAM chips for third party RAID cards and RAID-on-Motherboard solutions.

The company shipped more than 2 million units in 2011.

“MRAM has gained acceptance as a superior alternative to non-volatile SRAM for RAID conjtrollers, allowing Everspin to capitalize on its unique position as a high-volume MRAM supplier,” Jim Handy, an analysis with Objective Analysis, said in a statement.

Further growth is on the horizon, stated Phill LoPresti, CEO of Everspin.

“Going forward, we see our next generation of Spin-Torque MRAM products providing solutions for non-volatile buffers and caching applications as well as delivering a new nanosecond-class gigabyte-per-second non-volatile storage tier,” LoPresti said.

Scientists at IBM Research have demonstrated the ability to store information on as little as 12 atoms, the company claims, taking data capacity to a new order of magnitude.

Until now, it’s taken at least 1 million atoms to store any bit of data. IBM’s discovery could one day theoretically enable storage at 1/83,000th of today’s disk drives. The company has created the world’s smallest magnetic storage device, though the technology has a long journey to make before ever landing on a motherboard.

Until now, magnetic storage was limited by quantum mechanics, as maintaining a magnetic state was nearly impossible among several atoms. The atoms would simply hop from one state to another at too agile a time scale to claim data storage, Andreas Heinrich, the researcher behind the discovery, told Wired Magazine.

Until recently, scientists also faced the problem of keeping neighboring data bits from interfering with each other, as data was stored in a ferromagnetic structure using lumps of atoms in one direction, similar to a magnet or compass needle. IBM’s 12-atom approach utilizes an antiferromagnetic structure that points the atoms in opposite directions, which keeps the data bits from interfering with each other.

Researchers used a scanning tunneling microscope invented by IBM 30 years ago that allowed the scientists to view and arrange atoms.

The catch that currently limits the science to theory and laboratories is temperature. The 12-bit atom memory operates at 1 degree kelvin, or -458 degree Fahrenheit. Heinrich estimates that 150 atoms per bit could be achieved at room temperature, however.

The other problem is building something this small outside of a lab, or at least cost-effectively at a commercial scale. Actual devices using this technology would take five to 10 years to develop, Heinrich estimated.

“Using iron atoms on a copper nitrite surface is probably far from being a real technology. You don’t want to build this with the tool we’re using, which is a research tool,” Heinrich told ComputerWorld. “You want to build this cheaply for a mass environment, and that’s a huge engineering challenge.”

Regardless, the discovery proves that theoretical limits to data storage do not exist, which Heinrich characterized as mind blowing.

“Every once in a while, even we who work with this kind of stuff on an almost daily basis get blown away that it is actually possible,” Heinrich told Wired Magazine.