Overview of Oregon's High Tech Industry

Want a reason to move to Portland? Want to find a job in Oregon's tech sector? While employment hasn't gone back to it's pre-recession levels, there is still quite a lot happening in Oregon's high tech sector.

Mike Rogoway of The Oregonian newspaper says Oregon's high tech sector is alive, growing, up and running, but still struggling.

• Oregon tech job numbers are nearly back to their 1997 levels (57,000 as of April 2012) but still way below their spike of 72,800 in 2001.
• Venture capital money is close to being back up to 2007 levels at 238.86 million (2011 stats)

Intel is the big name, employing 16,200 Oregonians, and it will add 1000 more workers in the next year and a half when it opens DIX, a new research facility in Hillsboro. (Intel's headquarters remain in California, but its most vital operations are in Oregon.) Intel tops the data center industry, with China, Russia and India becoming ever more important, growing markets for Intel chips. Intel's revenues grew 24% last year to $54 billion. Growth has slowed but profits remain high as the company starts seeing positives from the billions it spent improving its factory network.

Several publicly-traded tech companies live in Portland's suburbs. FEI Co, in Hillsboro, is an electron microscope manufacturer with both record revenues and stock prices. Its tools are key in Intel's labs, and it's expanding into biotech and academic research.

Mentor Graphics Corp. just passed its $1 billion in sales last year. A locally started Oregon company, it employs 1000 people in Wilsonville.

Hillsboro's TriQuint Semiconductor's revenues are going up since it bagged a contract that has every new iPhone using a TriQuint amplifier. However, its limited manufacturing capacity has frustrated larger contracts from being filled, letting investors down.

Other companies that occupy a niche: LatticeSemiconductor, and RadiSys Corp.

Many small but promising, privately held start ups are doing business near each other in Portland's Pearl District: Act-On Software, Elemental Technologies, Jama Software, Janrain, Puppet Labs, ShopIgniter and Urban Airship. (Mozilla is likewise planning to open a Portland office). Most do their part to help build the infrastructure of the mobile internet, but don't act as large scale, Silicon Valley-like magnets.

A possibly more influential and riskier venture:  Simple (aka BankSimple) moved to Portland in 2011 and plans to improve the online interface capabilities of banking and similar industries.

Oregon's fastest growing aspect of the tech industry is outside Portland. Data centers (for Facebook and Amazon) have opened in Prineville, Oregon. With their capital intensive facilities (they require hundreds of top-quality computers), Oregon's lack of a sales tax has drawn them here like bees to honey, besides providing an exemption from property tax on equipment.

Find Mike Rogoway's original story: "Investment in Oregon tech companies heats up..."

at The Oregonian.