South Africa
Sun International's newly opened R1 billion Carnival City Casino near Brakpan has scored a world first following the installation of card redemption machines (CRM) and cash dispense/redemption machines (CDRM) supplied by Power Controls and software development company Minotaur Information Systems. Carnival City casino is believed to be the first casino in the world where a smart card system is operational, giving customers the choice to use either cards, coins or notes.
Alcatel Altech Telecoms (AAT) has been selected to manufacture, supply and commission a new comprehensive Microwave Radio Communications System for Eskom. The first phase of the 3-year, multimillion rand contract is worth over R14 million. This new radio system will be used for point-to-point telecommunications traffic within Eskom's various regions country-wide. The current Eskom regional radio system has to be replaced because it operates in a frequency band to be used by the possible new third cell and other operators.
Conlog has been awarded a R6,4 million contract by Altech subsidiary, Netstar to supply and manufacture specialist electronic vehicle tracking and recovery systems. This contract confirms Conlog's planned expansion in the contract-manufacturing arena. According to Cuan Watkins, Conlog's Contract Manufacturing's Divisional Manager, the high technology contract manufacturing industry is growing at a rate of 25% per year and the prime reason for this is that electronic companies are focusing on their core activities such as design and development, while outsourcing manufacturing.
A second Singaporian company has joined the growing band of companies investing in RFID and has become the tenth commercial partner involved in the commercialisation of the Trolleyponder/EcoTag UHF transponder system developed by South African company Trolley Scan. EcoTag technology allows passive UHF transponders to operate on very low powers compared to conventional techniques. This improvement can be as much as needing less than 2% of the conventional powers for equivalent performance, says the company.
Eskom's TSI has won the Technology Top 100 Acumen Holdings Limited Award in recognition of its commitment to technology capacity building and education. TSI shared the award with Eskom Technology, Eskom Corporate Technology and Environment Management function. TSI, part of the commercial arm Eskom Enterprises, is a multidisciplinary science, engineering and technology consultancy, focusing on the power sector and related energy industries.
Power protection equipment manufacturer, Tripp Lite has established Tripp Lite South Africa, a distribution and sales unit for its products. This allows it to bill in local currencies and launch a sales campaign in South Africa. Timothy Driessel has been named as the company's Country Manager of South Africa. A warehouse facility has also been opened near Johannesburg International and is maintained by Expeditors International.
Siphumelele Investments and Tellumat Holdings have sold their interests in Cords & Components to the management. Cords & Components will continue manufacturing all telecommunication cordage and accessories including wiring harnesses and interconnecting cables assemblies. The new company's main focus will be in the fields of thick film hybrids and transformer manufacture, as well as value-added solutions in assembly of systems. The factory remains Wetton, Cape Town with a marketing office in Gauteng. Its directors are Ferdi van Niekerk, Hans Zander and Sailesh Patel.
Distribution and moves
Components and System Design has been appointed as a distributor for IAR Systems. IAR Systems was a pioneer in the development of ANSI compliant and optimised C cross compilers for embedded microcontrollers.
Test Technology cc, also known as Test-Tech cc, has changed its name to Test & Rework Solutions (Pty) Limited (TRS). Since forming Test-Tech nearly 11 years ago its product portfolio has widened and it now no longer specialises in test equipment, but now also in manufacturing, repair and rework products says Managing Director, John Watson.
Gainta Industries, represented in South Africa by Sivan Electronic Supplies, has been awarded ISO 9002 certification.
LG Precision is now being operated as EZ Digital (easy). Sole local agents for the company, Test and Measurement Instruments, says that the merger will bring about few changes. Currently used model numbers will remain the same.
Mimic Crafts has been awarded an exclusive South African distributorship for the E2S range of electronic sounders. E2S (European Safety Systems) is a fast-growing specialist company offering safety sounders and flashers for industrial, mining, marine and hazardous environments.
Hellermann Tyton is moving to new headquarters at 34 Milky Way Avenue, Linbro Business Park, 2065. The new premises houses head office administration, stores and the manufacturing facility. The postal address remains the same. New telephone numbers are: (011) 879 6600 and fax (011) 879 6601.
Embedded Micro Solutions has changed its postal address to P.O. Box 6412, Birchleigh, 1621.
Overseas
Worldwide semiconductor sales have leaped to $14,2 billion for November, whilst industry sales increased 24,8% from one year ago. This is according to the latest figures from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). It marks the highest global sales numbers in the history of the industry by breaking the previous month's $13,4 billion record. Said George Scalise, SIA President: "Today's global sales numbers represent phenomenal growth for the semiconductor industry that has not occurred since the explosive growth of 1995. This is indeed an extraordinary time for the industry, in fact, the SIA forecast calls for continued robust growth in the new millennium." Year-to-date sales are up 17,1% through November 1999 compared to the first 11 months of 1998. Year-to-date November sales are outpacing the SIA's October industry forecast of 14,7%. He said that memory product demand is particularly strong with flash memory increasing 74,2% year-to-date in 1999, primarily driven by wireless communications. DRAM has increased 47,6% year-to-date in 1999 with PC and server demand being the major drivers. In the Japan and Asia markets, the industry grew at 38,6% and 39,3%, respectively from last year. The Americas market was up 16,4% from last year, and Europe's sales grew at 10,8%.
A squeeze in computer chip supplies is expected to increase the prices of electronic products over the next two years. This is due to the cost of some memory chips that has more than doubled in recent months. According to analysts the supply squeeze will probably continue through 2002 until new production plants come online. Analysts believe the higher prices could lead to better and ultimately less expensive products as companies invest in more efficient manufacturing techniques. At a recent symposium sponsored by the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International trade association, VLSI Technology and others released new chip industry forecasts. VLSI predicted chip sales would grow at a rate of 25% in both 2000 and 2001, up from 18% in 1999. Dataquest expects industry revenues to grow 22-25% in 2000, from $160 billion in 1999 to $195 million to $200 million, and forecasts a similar increase in 2001. IC Insights predicts 22% revenue growth in 2000 and 2002, with the expansion slowing to 17% in 2003.
IC Insights says in its new 'Emerging IC Markets 2000' technical report that the worldwide cellular phone market will experience double-digit growth into 2000 and IC makers serving the cellular handset market stand to reap the benefits. Worldwide shipments of cellular handsets grew 61% from 101 million units in 1997 to 163 million units in 1998, and are projected to grow another 58% this year to reach 258 million unit shipments. Currently the world's leading handset supplier, Nokia, was forecast to ship 81 million units by end 1999. Those handsets contain $3,3 billion worth of ICs, according to IC Insights' estimates. The group says that semiconductor manufacturers that provide IC content for cellular phones, especially DSPs, flash memory devices, RF baseband and analog chips, will experience a direct benefit from the growth. Companies producing system-on-chip designs and companies that provide multichip packaging technologies stand to gain in particlular, it says.
Said to be the most daring media merger yet, online pioneer America Online is buying Time Warner, the largest media and entertainment conglomerate in the world. The $162 billion deal would be the biggest corporate merger of all time, and this is said to mark the biggest bet yet that the Internet will be one of the most dominant features in the media landscape of the future. The deal also gives AOL a key tool for distributing its services, with access to Time Warner's 13 million cable subscribers, the nation's second largest cable network system after AT&T's.
Intersil Corporation and Fairchild Semiconductor have announced a strategic partnership to co-develop power integrated circuits tailored for use in laptop and portable computers. The development agreement between the two semiconductor manufacturers will allow them both to offer second-sourced power management circuits for low-voltage, portable computing applications. The companies will co-develop power ICs which provide core voltage to the CPU and provide battery monitoring functions for laptop, notebook and portable computers.
Vishay has entered into a wide-ranging technical cooperation agreement with Nichicon Corporation, Japanese manufacturer of aluminium and tantalum capacitors. The companies will jointly develop their tantalum capacitor technology, materials and production equipment to meet demand for high technology capacitors. Vishay anticipates that it will shortly introduce a new organic polymer tantalum capacitor with extremly low ESR.
Hitachi and NEC have formalised their plan to establish a joint-venture memory company. This new company, called NEC Hitachi Memory, is slated to begin operation April with an aim of eventually becoming the world's largest seller of DRAMs. A prime reason for this cooperation was to make sure that they can continue to sell DRAMs in high volumes amid intensifying competition from more muscular DRAM producers like Samsung, Hyundai and Micron. Under their original joint plans announced in June, NEC and Hitachi had intended to develop a common 0,15 µm process technology. But the companies later decided to begin work on a 0,13 µm process for 256 Mbit and 512 Mbit DRAMs. The joint-venture company will be headquartered in Tokyo and anticipates its first joint product will hit the market in 2001.
Marconi and Bosch Telecom ('Bosch') announced late last year that they have entered into an agreement for the acquisition of the Public Networks Division of Robert Bosch ('Bosch Public Networks'). Following completion Bosch Public Networks will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Marconi. Bosch Public Networks is a major supplier of public telecom network equipment to network operators and service providers in the Central European market. The acquisition provides Marconi's Communications Division (Marconi Communications) with a strong route to market in Germany, the third largest telecom market in the world.
Wavetek Wandel Goltermann (N. Carolina, USA) has sold its Precision Measurement Division (Norwich, UK) and its Test Tools (San Diego) product line to Fluke Corporation. Fluke will maintain the Wavetek Precision Measurement facility in the UK. That division, formerly known as Datron, will become part of the Fluke Industrial Group's Calibration Business Unit. This sale is a result of WWG's efforts to streamline operations, promote team synergies and dissolve geographical and traditional boundaries after its first year as a merged company. According to the company it is a long-term programme designed to prepare WWG for the future in the ever-changing global communications industry. WWG's LAN and Digital Broadcast businesses, operating in its San Diego Commercial Center, are not involved in the sale. The Test Tools business will continue to be based in San Diego and will become part of Fluke's Industrial Group.
Intersil reported first quarter sales of $133,9 million and operating income of $7,5 million. Compared to the first quarter of last fiscal year, operating income was up 39%, sales were up 9% and orders were up 18%. The company cited strong orders demand for its PRISM Wireless business - up 103% - and its Power business - up 45% - year on year.
The former Motorola division, ON Semiconductor, has announced a restructuring of its global distribution network. The company will go to market with three major global distributors and other regional specialised distributors. The three global distributors are Avnet, Arrow, and VEBA/EBV but will not include Future Electronics. ON Semiconductor says it is focusing its distribution strategy on the largest global distributors who are consolidating the distribution channel.
International Business Machines (IBM), has said it won the most US patents for the seventh year in a row in 1999. IBM said it had 2756 patents granted during the year by the US Patent and Trademark office. IBM is reported to have about 900 patents more than its nearest competitor. This record tops its prior all-time high in 1998 by nearly 3%. Most of IBM's patents were granted for technology related to electronic business.
Four electronics leaders are in an agreement with US website www.toolwire.com to launch 'pay-per-use' on-line access to high-end EDA tools. EDA group Synopsys, Sun Microsystems, Lucent Technologies and distributor Avnet are backing the project, which will give access to design tool software, top-of-the-line hardware servers and other resources via the site. The first tools available on the site will concentrate on FPGA technology. The site targets Actel, Altera, Atmel, Cypress, Dynachip, Lattice, Lucent, Quicklogic, Triscend and Xilinx designers. Lucent is making its Orca Foundry design tool available and Synopsys is providing its FPGA Express synthesis tool. Toolwire plans to provide even more sophisticated verification tools in future.
Philips will use Ericsson's Bluetooth design to reduce Bluetooth wireless links to a single chip during the next 18 months and approach $5 per device. According to the company, this is a joint development of Bluetooth with Ericsson providing the core, and Philips working on specific designs to offer RF and software stacks. Philips is developing a baseband chip, code-named Blueberry and based around the ARM7 core, that directly interfaces to its 'low IF' RF chip that spun out of its DECT digital cordless phone development. The combination includes the firmware protocol stack. Philips will use Software and Silicon Systems (S3), of Dublin, to provide higher level Bluetooth applications and customer-specific variants of the software. Philips then plans a true single chip for a simple point-to-point Bluetooth link that includes the RF and just needs an external power amplifier.
According to the Wall Street Journal, computer-chip makers should be able to keep boosting chip performance for at least 15 years despite some serious technical hurdles. It reported that the Semiconductor Industry Association said that chip makers may face problems within five years in maintaining improvements at current rates. However, the group has identified enough possible solutions to those bottlenecks to predict that the industry will continue to produce chips that will double in performance every 18 months as it has in the past. Memory chips will consist of 64 billion transistors by the year 2014, 1000 times the 64 million today for standard memory chips in personal computers, said Paolo Gargini, technology strategist at Intel, according to the paper. He also said that microprocessors will reach speeds of 3,6 GHz, compared with today's typical speeds of 500 to 733 MHz.
The US electronics assembly industry has established April 2000 as a target date for alloy suppliers to provide a short list of lead free solder alternatives. The Printed Circuit Interconnection Federation (PCIF) in the UK, together with the International Tin Research Institute (ITRI), is promoting the tin-silver-copper (SnAgCu) family of alloys as a substitute for lead solders. However, it is reported that some IPC members in the US favour tin-silver-bismuth (SnAgBi) alloys. In the IPC's Roadmap for Lead-Free Electronic Assemblies, a group of members found that SnAgCu would be an immediate answer to replacing lead solder, but SnAgBi was chosen as a second replacement, especially for surface mount technology applications, according to the reports. A full copy of IPC's Roadmap for Lead-Free Electronic Assemblies is available at www.leadfree.org
EBV-Elektronik, the Munich-based European semiconductor distribution specialist was named 'European Distributor of the Year' by Agilent Technologies' Semiconductor Products Group for its fiscal year 1999 (November 1998 to October 1999). This is the first time that Agilent Technologies, the former Hewlett-Packard Technology Division, has awarded a semiconductor distributor on a pan-European basis. Prior to 1999, EBV won the manufacturer's distribution awards for Central Europe - consecutively from 1995 through 1998. According to Derek Tibbitts, European Distribution Channel Manager of Agilent Technologies, "EBV not only achieved the highest sales growth in our European network but also conducted its business for the whole European region in the most effective way. There are few distributors with EBV's level of expertise in true demand creation. The centralised technical focus provided by the MIP program and FAE expert groups in RF design and optoelectronics, represent superb support for Agilent Technologies' world class product range."
Nokia has received an award from Belgacom Mobile for its outstanding professional services in the build-up of a new network expansion. In modernising the Proximus GSM network in Belgium, Nokia supplied base stations, base station controllers, Nokia Network Management System and a full range of customer services.
Digital subscriber lines (DSL) are quickly making inroads into the US residential and small business markets. At year end 1998, approximately 50 000 DSL lines were installed and by mid-1999, that number had already more than tripled to 160 000, according to IDC. Despite expected falling prices for the service, DSL revenues will soar past $2 billion in both the residential and small business markets by as soon as 2003 it says.
Motorola has built what it claims is the world's thinnest transistor. The company said it used a class of material called 'perovskites' which will allow future transistors to be smaller and faster while consuming less power. Silicon dioxide has been used for 30 years to form the thin insulating film on silicon, a necessary step in making integrated circuits. with the new material the technology allows for transistors that are effectively three to four times thinner. The company said computers and cellphones would get faster, more powerful and use less power.
In response to the tremendous increase in demand for wireless services, Ericsson and AT&T Wireless Services (AWS) have created an overlay network that increases network capacity by adding new radio hardware and making efficient use of available spectrum. This is the first application of its kind for AWS. The network currently serves customers in the heavily populated Miami market. The overlay system combines service on both the 850 MHz and 1900 MHz bands. This dual-band approach will boost network capacity by automatically directing calls involving multiband terminals to the band with the best level of service at the time. Users of single-band terminals will also benefit from the overall increased capacity of the system.
Marconi has announced a major commitment by BellSouth to deploy voice, video, and ATM based high speed data technology throughout the BellSouth network using Marconi's newly introduced ATM-based DISC-S MX access platform. Marconi projects that BellSouth's planned deployment will generate over $1,0 billion in sales revenue for the company over the next three years. This announcement follows the June, 1999 commitment to Marconi for Integrated Fibre in the Loop (IFITL) and represents a strong next step in BellSouth's broadband deployment strategy.
The Inmarsat Board of Directors has decided to proceed with its fourth generation system, at a cost of US $1,4 billion. The space segment of the system will consist of two in-orbit satellites plus one ground spare. Inmarsat will offer a full range of personal multi-media communications (PMC) at 144-432 Kbps. They will operate in Inmarsat's existing MSS L-band allocations in the 1,5/1,6 GHz band.
IBM has announced that it will make all its network computers compatible with the Linux operating system. IBM will configure its four lines of computer servers to work with the Linux open OS, further strengthening the open OS against rival technologies Unix and Windows NT.
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