Southern Africa
MTN Network Solutions, a provider of Internet and virtual private network services, has announced it will invest R15-million in fibre-optic cable over the next three years - making it one of South Africa's three largest independent suppliers of this high bandwidth technology. MTNNS said it expects to double fibre capacity over this year because of increased demand for quality international bandwidth, migration to fibre from satellite users, and competitive pricing. The MTNNS fibre network has points of presence in both the United States and Europe.
Jasco Group company, Webb Industries, has become one of the first recipients of the new Siemens Telecommunications Gold Supplier Awards. The award was made to Webb Industries on the basis of its level of delivery performance and for the quality of the final product. Webb Industries managing director Murray Webb said that the award of the Siemens Gold Award reflects Webb's commitment to excellence in its after sales service and its determination to produce quality products of the highest standard to meet the demands of local and international companies.
Catalyst Semiconductor has appointed MB Silicon Systems as a sales representative and distributor for South Africa. MB Silicon Systems will distribute all Catalyst's programmable products. See 'Catalyst Semiconductor expands in South Africa'.
Otto Marketing has announced that it has become a distributor for Taiwanese switch manufacturer Salecom Electronics.
Overseas
Business
Intel has reported better-than-expected 2002 fourth-quarter revenue of $7,2 bn, up 10% sequentially and up 3% year-over-year. Fourth-quarter net income was $1,0 bn, up 53% sequentially and up 108% year-over-year. Intel reported a 2002 third-quarter profit of $686m, on revenue of $6,5 bn. For the same period a year ago, Intel reported a profit of $504m, on sales of $7 bn. 2002 revenue was $26,8 bn, up 1% from $26,5 bn in 2001. Net income was $3,1 bn, up 141% from $1,3 bn in 2001. Intel also announced that capital spending for 2003 is expected to be between $3,5 to $3,9 bn, compared to 2002's $4,7 bn.
Samsung Electronics reported net income for 2002 of $5,98 bn, a 160% increase over the 2001 net profits. 2002 sales totalled $34,39 bn, up 25% from 2001. Q4 operating income was $1,27 bn on sales of $9,08 bn. Samsung's breakdown by business segment showed that the semiconductor and LCD group had operating income for 2002 of $3,24 bn on sales of $10,87 bn. The telecommunication networks group had operating income for the year of $2,53 bn on sales of $10,52 bn. The digital media unit had operating income of $327m on sales of $8,44 bn, and the digital appliances unit income of $109m on sales of $3,15 bn. Samsung also reported that it plans to spend $3,56 bn in semiconductor-only capital investment in 2003.
Linear Technology has announced that net sales for its second quarter was $145m, an increase of 20% over net sales of $121,3m for the second quarter of the previous year. Net income for the quarter was $56,2m, an increase of 22% from the $46m reported for Q2 last year. The company's gross margin improved more than three percentage points to 73,4% from 70,2% in the prior quarter, said the company.
Companies
The EU has cleared Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric to proceed with their October-announced logic chip merger. With Hitachi owning 55% and Mitsubishi holding 45%, the new company called Renesas is due to be established on 1 April, 2003.
The Memec Group has announced it has been signed as Pan-European distributor for Marvell, an extreme broadband communications technology leader. Unique, one of the Memec Group's specialist semiconductor distribution companies, said it will be offering enhanced technical support through its extensive team of applications engineers, as well as a full spectrum of logistics services.
Cadence Design Systems has announced that it has acquired circuit simulation tool vendor Celestry Design Technologies. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
RF Micro Devices has announced the completion of its acquisition of Resonext Communications, a company providing complete, highly integrated CMOS wireless local area network (WLAN) solutions for 802.11a and multiband (802.11a/b/g) platforms.
Intel has agreed to sell most of the assets of its Trillium Digital Systems subsidiary to Continuous Computing.
Hitachi announced it has purchased the majority of IBM's hard-disk-related assets for $2,05 bn. Hitachi will form a new storage company called Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.
Royal Philips Electronics and Taiwanese company Accton Technology have announced the signing of a letter of intent to merge their respective wireless connectivity module activities into a new joint venture company based in Taiwan. The new company is expected to have annual revenues of between $200 to $250m.
Industry
Global semiconductor sales reached $12,68 bn in November 2002, a 1,3% sequential increase from the $12,51 bn in revenue reported in October 2002, according to the SIA. November sales were up 19,6% from November 2001 sales. The semiconductor products that are benefiting from the strength of the wireless sector are led by Flash and Digital Signal Processors, which were up 6,6% and 3,7% resp in November. In addition, Wi-Fi has begun to contribute to the strength of this market. Furthermore, said the SIA, the computer segment continues to show growth with microprocessors up 0,5% and DRAMs increasing by 5,8%.
The EDA Consortium's Market Statistics Service (MSS) has announced that electronic design automation (EDA) industry revenues for Q3 of 2002 were $964m, compared to $987m in Q3 2001. IC Physical Design & Verification set the pace for revenue growth in the industry for the eighth consecutive quarter growing 6%, compared to the previous year's quarter. The largest tool category, computer-aided engineering (CAE), generated revenues totalling $464m in Q3 2002, compared with $467m in Q3 in 2001. PCB and multichip module (MCM) layout totalled $84m in Q3 2002, compared with $85m in the same period last year. The EDA industry's semiconductor intellectual property (SIP) posted positive revenue growth for the third consecutive quarter in Q3 2002, totalling $32m, 6% more than in Q3 2001. EDA Services revenue was $61m in Q3 2002, 39% less than in Q3 2001, said EDA Consortium.
After two years of negative growth, worldwide semiconductor capital spending and wafer fab equipment spending will return to double-digit growth in 2003, according to Dataquest. Worldwide semiconductor capital spending is projected to grow 15% in 2003 to $32 bn, up from $27,8 bn in 2002. Worldwide wafer fab equipment spending is expected to total $18,5 bn, a 16% increase from 2002 revenue of $15,9 bn.
A new report from iSuppli, the EMS H2 2002, reveals that the year 2002 was especially unkind to the electronics industry and to electronics manufacturing services (EMS) providers. While the stronger EMS firms resorted to plant closures and layoffs, the weaker firms were in a life and death survival mode, it says. However, for those that made it through 2002 intact, the good news is that 2003 is forecast to show 11% growth. In 2003, the total EMS market should pass the $100 bn, levels not seen since the year 2000, states the group.
Despite last year's slowdown and the continued market uncertainties in 2002, mobile phone sales, boosted by the introduction of new technologies and 15% a year growth in new subscribers, are forecast to reach 675 million by 2006, according to recent research performed by Reed Electronics Research. However, it finds that, mobile phone production, which had risen dramatically by over 40% to 405 million units in 2000, declined in 2001 by 5% to 385 million units and, with a build-up of handset inventory at the end of 2001 and a general weakness in most regions worldwide, there is likely to be only modest growth in 2002.
ON Semiconductor says it plans to perform additional restructuring designed to enable the company to return to profitability in the fourth quarter of 2003. The company expects to record restructuring and other charges in the range of $18m to $22m in the Q4 of 2002, including severance costs of approximately $12m associated with an approximate 4% reduction of its worldwide workforce over the next year. During the next 12 months, the company plans to consolidate several of its worldwide functions into fewer locations and further streamline operations.
With all that has happened in the last 18 months, the need for encryption chips is picking up steam, according to In-Stat/MDR. Although still in its infancy, the security IC market will be propelled upward by the continuation of heightened security concerns, coupled with the technology's ability to help companies operate more efficiently and lower operating costs. As a result, it says, the encryption chip market will grow from less than $75m in 2001 to over $575m by 2006. InStat believes that the most significant trend that will cause encryption chips to grow strongly over the next five years is the increase in integration that is occurring. Recently, the placing of security chips in the data path for higher-end applications, and as part of a highly integrated processor for lower-end applications, makes the use of encryptions significantly more efficient.
Citing a new replacement cycle in wireless and PCs, the semiconductor industry is expected to grow a respectable 10% in 2003 over 2002, according to a report from WR Hambrecht + Co. of San Francisco.
Although the economy has continued to impact the Bluetooth semiconductor market, it will experience high growth, says In-Stat/MDR. With recent, adjusted outlooks of shipments by vendors, and a gradual expected uptake in the economy in 2003, the market research firm expects final 2002 chipset shipment figures to surpass 35 million, for a growth rate of about 250%. However, InStat adds that one of the biggest challenges is the education of consumers, as the benefits of Bluetooth need to be marketed, rather than the technology itself.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) says it will provide emergency support to the government of Afghanistan in its efforts to restore its heavily damaged telecommunication and broadcasting infrastructure. In a two-year project document signed between the ITU's Telecommunication Development Bureau, and Afghanistan's Minister of Communications, the ITU intends to strengthen Afghanistan's institutional competence to govern the sector.
The technical design of a new video compression standard was agreed in December in Japan. It has been developed by a group of the world's leading technical experts, and promises dramatic improvements in video quality. The new standard is expected to find use in a wide variety of applications from mobile phones to high definition TV and is designed to radically improve video picture quality over networks such as the Internet, 3G Wireless and the PSTN. The new standard will be known as H.264 (the ITU-T name) and as ISO/IEC 14496-10/MPEG-4 AVC (the ISO/IEC name), and is expected to be published in the second quarter of 2003.
International Rectifier has announced that the Defense Logistics Agency, Defense Supply Center Columbus (DSCC) has certified its Advanced Analog facility in Santa Clara, California for compliance with the requirements of MIL-PRF-38534, DSCC's Class K manufacturer certification for hybrid microcircuits. This means that the facility is certified to produce hybrid microcircuits for use in mission critical and high-reliability applications.
Intel announced that Centrino mobile technology is the new brand name for its upcoming wireless mobile computing technology. The technologies represented by the Centrino brand will include a microprocessor (formerly code-named 'Banias'), related chipsets and 802.11 (Wi-Fi) wireless networking capability.
Microchip Technology has received the 2002 Best Supplier Award from Noticiário de Produtos Eletrônicos-Brazil (NPE) magazine for its success in delivering top-quality PICmicro microcontrollers. The 2002 NPE award recognises organisations around the world that excel in supplying premium products and consistently delivering on time.
Technology
IBM claims that it has produced the world's smallest working silicon transistor. At six nanometers in length, the transistor is at least 10 times smaller than state-of-the-art transistors currently in production. Transistor scaling, or the reduction of the gate length, improves the performance and speed of chips as well as lowers their manufacturing cost and power consumption per switching event. The new 6 nm gate transistor has a silicon layer only 4-8 nm thick yet retains proper turn-on and turn-off behaviour.
Through its CompanionCore Alliance Program, Actel says it has added more than 50 complete, system-level intellectual property (IP) building blocks that have been optimised for use with the company's ProASICPLUS and Axcelerator field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The new cores were developed by Actel and seven CompanionCore Alliance members: Amphion Semiconductor; CAST; GDA Technologies; Helion Technology; Inicore; Memec Design; and MorethanIP.
© Technews Publishing (Pty) Ltd | All Rights Reserved
printer friendly version