Southern Africa
In a bid to stimulate growth and employment in the electronics sector in the KwaZulu-Natal region, an interim association has been formed charged with the task of encouraging players in this sector to participate in the campaign. The interim committee of the KZN Electronic Industry Association is seeking prospective members and is lobbying for support for the association. Please see 'KZN electronics industry association formed to stimulate growth and employment'.
In a drive to cut costs and improve customer satisfaction through enhanced service levels, Siemens Southern Africa has announced that it is reducing its 33 service sites countrywide into 15, with five different service locations in the greater Johannesburg and Pretoria area centralised into a single building in Midrand, called the Siemens Service Centre. "The focus of the new Siemens Service Centre is to make it as customer-centric as possible by locating all Siemens service operations across all the individual business units in a single service facility, providing one point of contact for all enquiries," says Dr Klaus Döring, CEO of Siemens Southern Africa. "This move will also reaffirm the 'One Siemens' message, as all business units will interact more closely with one another."
Systematic Designs (Real-Time Solutions) has appointed: Bossie Coetzer as sales director - Products and Systems, and as partner in Systematic Designs; and Vuyo Mxenge as personal assistant, sales assistant and orders processing.
Zest Electric Motors has appointed Gary Daines as projects director.
Kyasand-based Digital Process Measurement (DPM) recently celebrated 15 years of successful design and manufacture at a birthday bash held on 12 August. The company is South Africa's largest manufacturer of panel meters, exporting to countries around the world.
Overseas
Business
Freescale Semiconductor, the former Semiconductor Product Segment of Motorola, announced second quarter 2004 sales of $1,46 bn, up 31% from 2003 Q2 net sales of $1,12 bn, and up 5% from the 2004 Q1 net sales of $1,40 bn. Net earnings in Q2 of 2004 were $43m. This compares to a net loss of $174m, in the second quarter of 2003. In Q1 2004, net earnings were $106m, which included separation expenses of $9m. The company said demand for its RF, digital signal processors, communications processors and microcontrollers helped drive growth.
RF Micro Devices, reported first quarter financial revenue of $165,8m, an increase of 26,0% versus revenue for the like quarter a year ago, and a sequential increase of 1,4% versus revenue for Q4 of the 2004 fiscal year. Gross profit for the quarter was $64,9m, an increase of 57,3% compared to the prior year period, and a sequential increase of 6,5% versus the previous quarter. The company attributed the year-over-year increase in gross profit primarily to increased sales, and the sequential profit increase to improved test yields for certain module products.
National Instruments reported second quarter revenue of $127m, an increase of 27% compared with Q2 2003. Operating income was up 70% from Q2 2003 and net income up 53% to $11,4m for Q2 2003. As of 30 June 2004 the company had $192m of cash and short-term investments. The company is expecting revenue in Q3 2004 to increase sequentially to between $127m and $131m.
Cambridge Display Technology Ltd, a pioneer company in conductive and light-emitting polymers, has filed for an initial public offering of shares on the Nasdaq market, through its subsidiary, Cambridge Display Technology Inc. The number of shares and the timing of the IPO has not yet been announced.
Companies
Crystal Fibre, a subsidiary of Danish company NKT Holding, has agreed to acquire BlazePhotonics, a UK-based developer of photonic crystal fibre, for $3,3m. Crystal Fibre is the result of a joint venture with COM Centret and its research staff at the Technical University of Denmark. BlazePhotonics was a spin-off from Bath University.
EMS Technologies has purchased key assets of Multitech Corporation for an undisclosed amount. The assets purchased are those directly related to Multitech's defence electronics business, and include hardware, software and intellectual property critical to radar, communication, remote sensing, optical tracking and electronic countermeasure systems.
Elron Electronic Industries has agreed to invest approximately $6,7m in Jordan Valley Applied Radiation, an Israeli private company engaged in developing in-line thin film metrology for the semiconductor industry.
EDA software vendor Cadence Design Systems has agreed to create an internal organisation dedicated to providing centralised support to Fujitsu's IC design centres all around the world. The move is part of an initiative to shorten Fujitsu's design lead times and improve design quality.
Zoran, a London-based fabless chip company, has formed a partnership with Falanx Microsystems, a licensor of graphics processing cores for mobile applications. Zoran said it would implement Falanx' 3D imaging processing technology in multimedia application processors for mobile phones.
Infineon Technologies and Winbond Electronics, of Hsinchu, Taiwan, have signed an agreement to expand their existing cooperation on the production of standard memory chips (DRAMs). Infineon will transfer its 0,09 μm DRAM trench technology and 300 mm production know-how to Winbond. In return, Winbond will manufacture DRAMs for computing applications in this technology exclusively for Infineon.
To help meet the demand for WiFi certification services in Europe, Cetecom Spain has been selected by the WiFi Alliance to become a WiFi certification laboratory. Its primary function is to test products against a bed of WiFi certified products that will enable it to verify the features and functions of tested products to support the 802.11a/b/g standards.
Industry
The global semiconductor market will see growth of 32% in 2004 to $220 bn, with further growth of 28,0% in 2005 to $282 bn, according to a new 2004 mid-term semiconductor forecast, published by Future Horizons. But the semiconductor market will see a decrease of 8% to $259 bn in 2006 as the industry sees the return of a cyclical downturn after an 18-month growth cycle, according to the group. "We fully accept that the 28% growth forecast for 2005 is high - and out of line with current conventional wisdom - but if the 2005 world economy grows at the currently predicted 4,0 to 4,6% level, unit demand will hold up and capacity will struggle," said Malcolm Penn, CEO of Future Horizons. Future Horizons also predicts that the European market will lag worldwide semiconductor market growth, with 26,6% growth in 2004 to $40,9 bn, 26,0% growth to $51,5 bn in 2005 and a decline of 6,0% to $48,4 bn in 2006.
The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) announced that the 'actual' worldwide sales for June were $20,70 bn. This is nearly $3 bn more than the $17,82 bn three-month average figure given by the SIA, and up 40,3% from the 'actual' sales in June 2003. Chip sales in the first half of 2004 were $102,16 bn, up 36,2% from the sales recorded in the first half of 2003. The June 'actual sales' for the Asia Pacific region was $8,79 bn, for Japan it was $4,29 bn, the Americas $4,02 bn, while Europe was responsible for $3,61 bn. The SIA and other regional industry groups publicise sales statistics as three-month moving averages of monthly sales activity rather than the actual numbers to smooth out variations due to companies' differing sales reporting calendars.
The electronic design automation (EDA) industry's revenue for Q1 2004 was $995 m, a 6% increase over Q1 2003, according to the EDA Consortium's Market Statistics Service. Services revenue increased 31% over first quarter of last year to $76m. Semiconductor intellectual property at $78m showed a 15% increase over the same quarter last year. For the quarter, EDA licence and maintenance revenue increased 3% over the previous quarter, to $840 million, and was 84% of the total reported revenue. EDA's largest tool category, computer-aided engineering, generated revenue of $470m, 6% more than the same period in 2003. Revenue for PCB and multichip module layout totalled $85m, 5% more than Q1 2003. IC physical design and verification revenue at $285m was down slightly from $288m in the same period last year.
Sales of camera phones, which are heavily subsidised by cellular carriers, fuelled a 38% surge in handset shipments in the second quarter, reports market research firm Strategy Analytics. Booming sales in emerging markets, such as Latin America, Eastern Europe and Russia, also contributed to the 157 million handsets shipped. Phones with built-in cameras, however, were a significant reason why sales were growing. As a result, Strategy Analytics upped its shipments forecast for the year to 670 million units from 586 million units estimated in January. Handset manufacturers shipped 517 million units in 2003.
In a newly published report, Dell'Oro Group predicts that sales of wireless LAN products will grow 20% in 2004 to $2,1 bn. According to the report, enterprise-class access point shipments are forecast to increase dramatically by 75% in 2004, growing at an average annual rate of 47% through 2008.
RF Micro Devices, Skyworks, TriQuint and <iM/A-COM</i> were the top four vendors of gallium arsenide devices in 2003, according to Strategy Analytics. The four companies, all based in the US, accounted for 51% of the total GaAs device market, worth $2,7 bn. Japanese companies, BEC, Sony, Matsushita, Mitsubishi Electric and Fujitsu, accounted for 21% of the 2003 market, demonstrating leadership in both GaAs MMIC and GaAs discrete markets.
VLSI Research has reported that the foundry sector of the semiconductor chip market will grow 33% in 2004 compared with 2003.
Racal Instruments Wireless Solutions (RIWS), an Aeroflex company, has become the first test equipment manufacturer to have approved test cases for use in the UMTS 1900 MHz 'FDD Band II'. The US Standards Body has approved 55 test cases for the 6401 AIME/CT Protocol Conformance test platform, making RIWS the only supplier to offer handset manufacturers the capability to test the compliance of 3G handsets in this frequency band, it said.
Accellera has approved the Property Specification Language, PSL 1.1, as a design verification standard, and has begun the IEEE standardisation process. According to Accellera, the PSL standard addresses the shortcomings of natural language forms of design specification, allowing engineers to capture the functional specifications of logic design in a way that is unambiguous, effective and concise, using the notion of properties and assertions.
The market for products with IEEE 1394 continues to be characterised by both tremendous opportunity and enormous ambiguity, states In-Stat/MDR. The high-speed serial bus specification (also known as FireWire or i.Link) is thriving in both PC and consumer electronics (CE) markets. However, major inhibitors do exist in this market. These include interface alternatives, including USB 2.0 and digital visual interface (DVI) and high definition multimedia interface (HDMI), in addition to a continuing tech slump. In a new report, In-Stat/MDR further reveals that the past year has seen big news for this market with the announcement of two new 1394 specifications: 1394c combines 1394b and Ethernet onto a common physical layer and promises to have an impact in the home networking space, where both technologies compete; the other concerns Wireless 1394, a specification to transmit 1394 wirelessly over ultra wideband (UWB). Wireless 1394 will be optimised for in-room cluster connectivity, including ad-hoc connections, between a portable device and tabletop device, such as a digital camcorder and DVD recorder.
Agilent Technologies has been named the leader of the fibre-optic components market by optical communications industry research firm RHK, with a 15,4% market share for 2003.
Freescale Semiconductor has announced it has become the first company to receive Federal Communications Commission (FCC) certification for its direct sequence ultrawideband (UWB) communications solution. With this certification, Freescale can begin commercial shipments of its XS110 chipset immediately, allowing its customers to design UWB technology into consumer electronics applications for unlicensed operation anywhere in the USA. The company claims its DS-UWB chipset achieves datarates over 110 Mbps.
The ZigBee Alliance has highlighted the collective progress of its members to bring new ZigBee-enabled wireless communication solutions to the market. At Sensors EXPO and Conference in Detroit in July, ZigBee-ready technology took centre stage as Sensicast Development was presented with the Gold award for its Sensicast Development System in the category of Communications and Networking Products. Alliance members receiving Silver awards were: Crossbow Technology for its MICAz mote; Ember's EM2420 radio chip; Freescale Semiconductor's ZigBee-ready Platform with 2,4 MHz RF transceiver; and the ZMD44101 single chip RF transceiver from ZMD.
CeBit America 2005 has been cancelled, because the organisers have been unable to raise enough money from technology companies to hold the New York tradeshow. Without commitments from exhibitors, Hannover Fairs USA decided it was too risky to spend the money necessary to run the tradeshow. Event management said on its website it is currently in discussions with interested third parties regarding the continuation of the event. The June 2005 event would have been the show's third year.
Technology
NASA is planning the world's biggest Linux-based supercomputer to aid research and space missions. Project Columbia will mean NASA's computing power will be ramped up by 10 times to do complex simulations, it said. The system will have 500 terabytes of storage, the equivalent of 800 000 CDs and will use 10240 Intel Itanium 2 processors for complex computer simulations. The project is based at its Ames Research Center in California.
A static frequency divider circuit manufactured in a submicron indium-phosphide double heterojunction bipolar process technology, has been demonstrated that can operate at a frequency of 152 GHz, by Rockwell Scientific Company. The achievement is a milestone in the Darpa-funded program called Technology for frequency agile digitally synthesised transmitters (Tfast). Tfast was set up to advance InP DHBT technology for mixed-signal circuit applications such as very high speed ADC and DAC and direct digital synthesiser circuits. InP DHBT transistors should provide high electrical breakdown, low phase noise, and wide bandwidth, and are intended for use in in-flight reprogrammable satellite communication links, in-combat programmable electronic warfare jammers, and millimetre-wave transmitters, said Rockwell.
New electronic textile antennas being developed are said to boost performance of OEM wireless and radar products. Applied Radar claims its 'E-textile' antennas promise novel methods of producing lightweight, flexible antennas with performance surpassing current solutions in a wide variety of applications. It says the ET-100 series of antennas are lighter in weight and lower cost than traditional printed circuit alternatives and provide enhanced compatibility, improved manufacturability, and performance. A sister technology, ET-Conformal, provides product designers with the opportunity to integrate very low cost antennas into such products as ceiling tiles, airframes, vehicles, and ship hulls.
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