Southern Africa
The new authorised Fluke distributor in southern Africa, Electest Distribution, has announced that it will now be trading as Comtest. Comtest is the only officially authorised Fluke Partner in southern Africa following its appointment by Fluke with effect from 3 January 2005.
Cellfind, Infotech and Netcare 911 have partnered to develop the first voice-free medical emergency panic button in South Africa. '911 Alert' allows one to send a distress signal by pushing a button on their cellphone without having to verbally identify oneself or provide location details. Once the call centre receives the alert, a GSM positioning system created by Cellfind can identify the location of the cellphone accurate to 250 m. A profile of the individual in distress also appears on the computer system and details any registered medical conditions.
MTN has awarded Glenayre Technologies contracts totalling in excess of $7M to provide a next generation messaging solution for its mobile network in South Africa. MTN will use Glenayre's Versera Intelligent Communications Environment (Versera ICE) to provide subscribers with voice mail and advanced messaging capabilities. The contracts include approximately $5m for equipment that will be deployed in 2005, with the remainder being for a multiyear services and support agreement.
Denver Technical Products has announced it is now fully-certified to do technical support, repairs and maintenance on DynAmp products, formerly known as Lem DynAmp and Halmar Electronics.
Zetech is hosting lead-free seminars in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town on 8, 9 and 10 March respectively. Contact: +27 (0)11 789 3230, [email protected].
Overseas
Business
Actel reported net revenues of $40,3m for Q4 of 2004, down 1% from the like quarter of 2003 and up 2% from Q3 of 2004. For the year, net revenues were $165,5m, up 10% from 2003. Actel reported a net loss of $3,2m for Q4 of 2004, compared with net income of $2,3m, for Q4 of 2003. Net income was $2,4m for the 2004 fiscal year compared with $6,2m for 2003.
International Rectifier has reported earnings of $44,8m for the December quarter. This compares with $42,4m for the September quarter and $24,6m for the prior-year quarter. Net income was $39,5m for the December quarter versus $37,6m for the prior quarter and $16,9m for the same quarter a year ago. Revenues were $298,6m in the December quarter, up 18% the prior-year quarter and down 4% from the September quarter.
Intersil announced net revenue of $127,1m for Q4, compared to $127,0m for the previous quarter and down from $136,1m for the same period last year. Net income for the fourth quarter was $15,8m as compared to a net loss of $29,6m in the third quarter of 2004. For the fourth quarter of 2003, net income was $23,7m.
Maxim reported net revenues of $436,1m for Q2 of 2005, a 29% increase over the $338,1m reported for Q2 of 2004. Net income for the second quarter was $144,6m, a 46,8% increase over the $98,5m reported for the same quarter a year ago.
National Instruments reported record fourth quarter revenue of $137m, a 9% sequential increase from Q3 2004. Net income was $16,5m, up 47% from Q4 2003. For 2004, NI said revenue was a record $514m, up 21% from that in 2003.
Companies
National Instruments has acquired Electronics Workbench, a leading supplier of electronics design automation software. Its flagship product, the Multisim circuit simulation software, is widely used for electronic circuit design, board layout and electrical engineering training programmes.
Freescale Semiconductor has acquired the assets of PrairieComm, a developer of baseband devices for 3G applications.
ATI Technologies is acquiring Terayon Communication Systems' cable modem silicon IP business for $14 m.
Merck KgaA, of Germany, will purchase the organic light-emitting diode materials and polymer electronics businesses of Avecia for 50 million euros. The acquisition includes Covion Organic Semiconductors, a specialist in high quality OLED materials.
WJ Communications has announced it will acquire Telenexus, a developer of RFID products for a broad range of industries and markets for approximately $10 m.
Andrew has acquired Xenicom for approximately $11,5 m. Xenicom is a UK-based provider of software solutions that help telecommunications operators plan, launch and manage wireless networks.
Eagleware, a supplier of high frequency system design software for the RF and microwave industry, has changed its name to Eagleware-Elanix to reflect its recent acquisition of Elanix, an electronic-system level (ESL) design tool provider.
Aeroflex has renamed Racal Instruments Wireless Solutions (RIWS) to Aeroflex. Aeroflex purchased the Wireless Solutions Group from Racal Instruments in July 2003.
TES (Technology Electronic Solutions) is the name of a new independent full service electronics design and manufacture company formed through the acquisition of Thales Electronic Solutions business by a group of investors. The activities included in the acquisition are five design centres in France, the Grand Fougeray and Langon production centres, an RF centre in Chateaubourg, the CEACI facility in Toulouse, and eight design centres in Germany and Scotland.
The Quick Lock Formula Alliance has been formed by a group of manufacturers to set a common standard for the Quick Lock Formula Interconnect System. This system, which comprises QMA and QN coaxial connectors, is an emerging interface concept becoming accepted among telecom OEMs for interconnection. While having the same technical performance as threaded SMA or N connectors, they feature a snap-on interface, 360° rotation after mating and denser packaging to improve the quality of RF interconnections while saving time. Under the Alliance there are currently three global QLF suppliers, Radiall and Huber+Suhner who jointly developed the connector concept, and their licensee Rosenberger High Frequency Technology.
Analog Devices has licensed Impinj fuse memory technology. Impinj has developed a non-volatile memory called AEFuse (advanced erasable fuse), which is the world's first multiple-times-programmable (MTP) fuse manufacturable in standard logic CMOS processes. It is aimed at embedded low-bit count, limited cycling requirements.
Kopin will exit LED business and has formed a joint venture company called Ko-Brite, with a number of investors to establish light-emitting diode manufacturing operations in Asia.
Infineon Technologies, Samsung Electronics, Trolltech and Emuzed have announced the world's first UMTS/EDGE smartphone reference design based on the Linux operating system. The reference platform showcases many advanced 3G and multimedia services such as UMTS/EDGE dual-mode voice calls, video calls and video streaming, high performance multimedia applications, ultra-fast Web browsing, stereo loudspeaker with 3D audio and Java-based 3D gaming.
Industry
Worldwide sales of semiconductors reached a record $213 bn in 2004, a year-on-year increase of 28% from the $166,4 bn recorded in 2003, reported the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). Chip sales declined in December by 3,5% sequentially to $18,4 bn, in line with historical seasonality. December sales were 14,6% higher than in December of 2003. Fourth-quarter sales, at $55,1 bn, declined by 0,8% from the immediate-prior quarter sales of $55,5 bn.
European market research firm Future Horizons has re-iterated its prediction that the semiconductor market will grow by 15% in 2005 to produce annual sales of $245 bn. According to Future Horizons, the electronics industry was broadly flat in the fourth quarter of 2004 and is set to remain so into early 2005. However, it insists the market is then set to bounce back strongly in the second half of the year, yielding an overall IC unit growth of about 9% and an annual inflation of average selling prices of at least a further 6%, taking the overall market up 15%.
The market for AlGaInP laser diodes, a key element in optical drives, is expected to boom over the next five years, to become a $1,5 bn global market for the devices by 2009, according to Strategy Analytics. A key driver is sales of DVD players, according to the research group.
Although the network processor (NPU) market has been sluggish in recent years, it is finally perking up, according to In-Stat. Overall NPU units shipments grew in 2004 by 86% over 2003 shipments and overall revenue will approach half a billion dollars by the end of 2008.
The annual market for automotive camera imaging chips will reach almost 7 million units and $40 m in 2008, estimates Strategy Analytics. The total market for automotive cameras is expected to grow at a compound average annual growth rate of over 100% from 2005 until 2010.
The IEEE has begun work on two amendments to the IEEE 802.11 standard for wireless local area networks (WLAN). One will aid interworking between IEEE 802.11 equipment and external networks, and the other will enhance how network stations are managed. IEEE 802.11 standards form a family of specifications that define how WLAN equipment should be produced so equipment from different manufacturers can work together. See http://www.ieee802.org/11/.
NAND-based flash memory is projected to overtake NOR-enabled products in terms of market share for the first time in 2005, according to IC Insights. In 2004, the NOR-flash market was larger than the NAND segment by a 59% to 41% margin, respectively. In total, fewer NAND flash devices are forecast to be shipped as compared to NOR devices, but because of higher average selling prices, the NAND market segment is expected to grow more quickly and surpass the NOR segment in 2005.
Sun Microsystems has launched a pay-as-you-go service which will allow customers requiring huge computing power to rent it by the hour. Sun Grid costs users $1 for an hour's worth of processing and storage power on systems maintained by Sun. Said Sun's chief operating officer Jonathan Schwartz: "Why build your own grid when you can use ours for a buck an hour?"
It was a good year for the DSP chip market in 2004. Up 27,2% over the previous year (to a value of $7,8 bn) according to market researchers, Forward Concepts. As one might expect, the principal driver has been the wireless market, which now constitutes almost three fourths of the DSP market, at 71,5% (up from 68% in 2003). Forward Concepts's top five were: TI, 49,7%; Freescale, 12,9%; Agere Systems, 9,8%; Analog Devices, 7,7%; and Philips Semiconductors, 6,8%. Included for the first time, Philips' 2004 DSP revenue growth of 407% has moved it out of the 'other' category and into respectability, said Forward Concepts. Philips' rapid growth is attributable to its cellphone baseband chips, while Freescale also had remarkable growth in the cellphone market, with 59% growth in overall DSP shipments.
Speedline Technologies has been awarded Frost & Sullivan's 2005 Surface Mount Technology Company of the Year Award.
Technology
Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs and FCI claim to have successfully demonstrated 25 Gbps data transmission over an electrical backplane using a Bell Labs-developed new signalling architecture and FCI's AirMax VS connector system. This is more than twice the highest transmission rates that have been demonstrated to date over electrical backplanes and is a significant step towards achieving 100 Gbps Ethernet (4 x 25 Gbps) over electrical backplanes, said Bell Labs. The group employed duobinary signalling, a technique that uses three electrical signal levels to represent binary code.
Intel has completed initial production runs of its forthcoming dual-core processors, and says it will begin shipping them to market next quarter. The Pentium Extreme processor will ship with a new chipset - the Intel 955X Express that will have HD Audio, PCI Express and dual-channel DDR-2 memory. The mainstream Pentium 4 processor will ship with two new chipsets - the 945G Express and 945P Express.
Xilinx and Ansoft have announced a new gigabit interconnect design kit that allows customers to perform accurate 'what if' analyses on high speed PCB and backplane designs.
At the recent ISSCC, Seiko Epson presented a paper on a flexible, 8-bit asynchronous microprocessor, based on a low-temperature, poly-silicon TFT technology. Intended for the emerging flexible microelectronics market, the ACT11 processor is a flexible, 32 000-transistor device, which measures 27 x 24 x 0,2 mm and weighs 140 mg. It has 80 I/O pins, runs from 30 to 500 kHz and operates from 3,5 to 7 V.
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