Southern Africa
Merryl Ford was among the 13 inventors from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) who received recognition for patents granted to the CSIR during 2003. The Innovation Fund's Patent Incentive Fund aims to increase the number of inventions by researchers at publicly-funded research institutions, and to encourage them to file patent applications with the South African Patent Office. Merryl Ford developed a video-on-demand system that can be used for any multimedia content such as video, music, games, educational content and software. Her system is based on user preference and rating model and can predict which other multimedia content users are likely to want. The content, once downloaded into a system, is stored on the user's device and is available for access when the user wants to use it. The download and store algorithm eliminates the need for large bandwidth and therefore makes it easy to deliver bandwidth-intensive multimedia files over satellite. A potential use would be to cost-effectively provide educational material to schools. Ford worked with colleague Kobus Roux on the project that was developed in 1999. The Innovation Fund is an initiative of the Department of Science and Technology, and is managed by the National Research Foundation.
CCTV surveillance technology specialist, Thales Advanced Engineering, has completed a multimillion rand contract from ACSA to manufacture and install an electronic on-line surveillance system for the parking facilities at Johannesburg Airport. The Thales SINON licence plate recognition system is being used in what the company reckons is the largest parking security installation in the country. Cameras cover the 20 000 parking areas and cover the 44 entry and exit lanes. The SINON system is highly automated and extracts the number plate and colour of the vehicle from the entry event. This information can also be recorded on the parking ticket for verification.
Comztek Africa, a joint venture company between local IT distributor, Comztek, and DS Technology Distribution, has opened a branch in Zambia as part of its expansion programme into the SADC region. Located in Lusaka with a depot in Kitwe in the heart of the Copper Belt, the new branch services not only Zambia but is also capable of servicing a number of other surrounding countries in the region. Comztek Africa says that its main aim is to grow its share of the African ICT market through the localisation of various aspects of its operations such as customer interface, stockholding and warranty administration.
Acterna, recently acquired by JDS Uniphase, has appointed Comtest as its sole representative in southern Africa, effective 1 August 2005. Acterna is dedicated to communications test solutions. Comtest provides test and measurement, communications, equipment and solutions from leading manufacturers to the southern African market. See 'Acterna appoints Comtest as its southern African representative'.
R.F. Cable & Connector Supplies, a Johannesburg-based supplier of peripheral items to the commercial radio communications market for the past 10 years, has now opened a new branch in Blackheath, Cape Town, in order to serve the Western and Eastern Cape regions. The branch carries a full range of the company's product lines, with daily deliveries to clients in the Cape peninsular. It is managed by Donevan Clark and assisted by Roger Bacon, whose responsibility is primarily for the out-of-town clients, extending as far afield as East London and Port Elizabeth. Contact: +27 (0)21 905 3620, fax: +27 (0)21 905 3482.
Auto Scanning Systems, a Trolley Scan licensee that provides a second-source range of Trolleyponder technology, has launched its new website at www.autoscanning.com.
Overseas
Business
Agilent Technologies has announced revenues for the quarter of $1,69 bn, 10% below last year, while third quarter net earnings were $104m, compared with $100m for last year's third quarter. Agilent reported orders of $1,80 bn for the third quarter, 1% above a year ago. For the quarter, semiconductor products orders of $499m were up 25% from a year ago and up 8% sequentially. Profits of $39m for this segment were $2m below last year, on an $8m drop in revenues. Sequentially, profits were up $27m on a $36m increase in revenues. The company has just sold off its semiconductor business for $2,66 bn, and also plans to spin off its logic and memory test businesses.
Analog Devices has posted net earnings of $121,4m on sales of $582,4m for the third fiscal quarter. Sales declined 4% from $603,7m the previous quarter, while earnings rose 3% from $117,6m. Analog Devices said that sales to its medical, defence and industrial instrumentation customers increased in the third quarter compared to the immediately prior quarter, but this was offset by declines in sales to ATE and automotive customers. It also said that the communications market was generally weak due to lower sales of products used in wireless and broadband applications.
Companies
Agilent Technologies has sold its semiconductor business to equity fund companies Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) and Silver Lake Partners for $2,66 bn. The move creates the largest privately-held independent semiconductor company in the world. In addition, it has agreed to sell its stake in Lumileds to Royal Philips Electronics for $950m plus repayment of $50m of debt from Lumileds. The company also confirmed it will spin off its SoC and memory test businesses by next year. Agilent expects the moves to reduce its global infrastructure costs by $450m, as it moves to become a pure play test-measurement company.
Qualcomm has acquired Elata, a UK leader in mobile content delivery software, for approximately $57m. Elata's software products provide operators with solutions for managing, delivering and marketing rich wireless content.
Silicon Laboratories has announced the acquisition of Silicon Magike, a developer of mixed-signal ICs, for $16m in cash.
JDS Uniphase has agreed to sell its passive Q-switched microlaser product line and its plant in Grenoble, France, to Teem Photonics, also of Grenoble. Under the agreement, JDS Uniphase will also license to Teem Photonics, the IP associated with passive Q-switched microlasers, and supply components critical to the manufacture of the microlasers.
In a move to expand its communications chip business, Freescale Semiconductor has acquired the assets of Canadian company, Seaway Networks. Seaway is a fabless semiconductor supplier of content-processing technology and products for the data networking industry.
Anritsu of Japan will acquire NetTest, headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark. NetTest is a provider of network monitoring and communications test equipment.
Intel has announced it will acquire XML solutions provider Sarvega, to bolster its software and enterprise strategies.
EiC has announced the creation of a separate company for application, test and design engineering. The company, Innocomm, is located in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan. EIC offers InGaP HBT power amplifier module products for CDMA, WCDMA and TDMA applications.
LSI Logic has reorganised its business to focus on the company's key markets of custom ICs, consumer products, and storage platforms and products. Under the reorganisation, it will establish four major business groups: the Custom Solutions Group (CSG) will be responsible for the company's Standard Cell, RapidChip Platform ASIC and Design Services offerings; the Consumer Products Group (CPG) will provide standard product and custom solutions for consumer end markets based on core competencies in digital media processing; the Storage Components Group (SCG) is focused on storage standard products, including Ultra320 SCSI controllers, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and SATA solutions. In addition, LSI has merged its RAID Storage Adapters (RSA) division into Engenio Information Technologies, LSI's storage systems subsidiary.
Ezconn has signed an agreement to acquire the FTTx BIDI business from Infineon Technologies. Infineon is a pioneer in the development of bidirectional transceiver and optical sub-assemblies (OSA). EZconn is a manufacturer of interconnect components for broadband access applications.
Following German securities law approvals, Littelfuse has announced that it is now able to integrate the Wickmann Group and its Wickmann, Efen and Pudenz brand of circuit protection products from Heinrich Industrie, into the global organisation. The Wickmann Group's electronic products are marketed under the Wickmann name. The product line includes fuses for a variety of electronic devices in the consumer, data and telecom markets. Automotive products are sold under the Pudenz name and products for the electrical business are marketed under the Efen name.
Mixed-signal semiconductor supplier TDK Semiconductor, has changed its name to Teridian Semiconductor, effective immediately. See 'TDK Semiconductor changes name to Teridian Semiconductor'.
Agilent Technologies and Sunplus Technology, a Taiwanese IC design company, have signed an MoU to jointly develop next-generation PC optical mouse system chips. The two will develop highly integrated systems-on-chips that combine Agilent's optical mouse sensor technology with Sunplus' microcontroller intellectual property cores.
Industry
The Distributors' and Manufacturers' Association of Semiconductor Specialists (DMASS) has reported that the European semiconductor distribution market has been sluggish, particularly in the second quarter of 2005, with sales 6% lower than in 2004. Semiconductor distribution sales from April to June 2005, closed at 1,153 bn Euros. The first half of 2005 resulted in 2,34 bn Euros semiconductor components sales by DMASS members, which is 4,5% lower than the first half of 2004. Said Gary Nevison, DMASS chairman, "The signs of slowdown that we experienced in the first quarter, continued in the latest reporting period. 2005 seems to become a transition year, driven by a slow market and some uncertainties, which the EU-Directives RoHS and WEEE impose on the industry. But we all are long enough in the industry to understand that components are a cyclical business." The strongest regional markets for semiconductors were Czech Republic (14,2%), Russia (13,8%), Israel (5,5%) and Austria (1,8%). All the Western European countries declined between 3,5% (Italy) and 25,3% (Sweden).
According to an SG Cowen Securities report, worldwide semiconductor inventories are low and stable entering the second half of 2005, although the levels among electronic distributors remains somewhat of a concern. Overall, semiconductor inventories are now in 'equilibrium' and are expected to remain flat, said the report.
Light-emitting diodes will become a significant part of the general-purpose lighting market, but not until 2010, according to a new iSuppli report. The firm expects the market for LEDs in general lighting applications to expand to $875m in 2010, from $144m in 2005 - a 52% CAGR. It said growth will hinge on development and availability of high-brightness and ultra-high brightness LEDs. Overall, global LED sales are expected to rise 11% in 2005, after rising 26% in 2004, according to iSuppli.
Buoyed by a strong, eventful 2004, unit shipments of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) will grow over the next few years at a CAGR of 19,9% to nearly 6 billion units in 2009, reports In-Stat. Funding for MEMS companies increased by 43,9% in 2004 versus 2003. Year-over-year total MEMS revenues were up 32% from 2003 to 2004. Microfluidic devices accounted for nearly 69% of total unit shipments and 23% of total revenues in 2004. With more cellphones integrating RF MEMS devices and inertial sensors and the optical networking sector now embracing MEMS technology, In-Stat reckons that the communications market will experience the highest CAGR for unit shipments and revenues.
Annual shipments of 1" diameter hard disk drives will nearly triple from 8,7 million units in 2004 to 23,2 million in 2005 and move on to 140,0 million units in 2009, according to The Information Network. This represents a CAGR of about 75% for the total period. The market researchers said that the increasing number of mobile applications such as MP3 players, PDAs, digital still and video cameras, that use miniature disk-based storage, is pushing the growth. It said the sector will come under pressure from solid-state non-volatile memory.
Intel and other technology leaders have announced the 'digital communities' industry initiative. The effort will focus on enabling communities to use their wireless infrastructures to deliver new or improved services to government, businesses and citizens.
Epcos has joined the Strategic Partnership for Sensor Technology in Regensburg, Germany. The 26 members of this partnership from science and industry include high-tech companies such as Infineon Technologies, Krones and Osram Opto Semiconductors as well as the University of Regensburg and Regensburg University of Applied Sciences. Epcos said sensors and sensor systems are emerging as one of the strongest growth industries. It said it will cooperate more closely with leading companies in sensor technology and take a more active part in shaping the industry's future.
Lexar Media has settled its patent infringement case with Memorex involving CompactFlash cards.
Microchip Technology has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Zilog alleging that its 8-pin Z8 Encore! XP 4K series of microcontrollers infringe on three of its patents.
Zigbee wireless chip developer, Ember, has opened a new research and business facility in Cambridge, England, to accommodate expansion of the company's radio IC development team, as well as a business development team serving Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Ember has also announced new business with a US government defence agency, valued at more than $1m.
Technology
SunPower has announced it has discovered a new performance effect it calls 'surface polarisation' in high-efficiency silicon solar cells. Surface polarisations create the non-destructive and reversible accumulation of static charge on the surface of high-efficiency solar cells, it said. The effect occurs when minute amounts of electrical current leak through the face of the solar cell and accumulate on the surface. SunPower said it found that electricity production in systems that use high-efficiency solar cells could be significantly decreased or increased by varying the system wiring and grounding configurations. As the result of the company's discovery, SunPower scientists have developed and applied for patents on new solar cell and system designs that eliminate surface polarisation.
Intel has outlined its research efforts in 'user-aware' chip and platform technologies that could intuitively respond to the user and environment. Such platforms will use a new level of intelligence to manage multiple tasks to simplify one's life. A user-aware platform will be "...any device that can take care of itself, knows who we are, where we are, and tries to anticipate what we want done," stated Justin Rattner, director of Intel's corporate technology group.
GE Global Research, the research group of General Electric, has announced the development of an 'ideal' carbon nanotube diode that operates at the 'theoretical limit', or best possible performance. This is a significant improvement upon the original nanotube diode device the company announced last year. It said this latest breakthrough will enable even smaller and faster electronic devices with increased functionality. In a related discovery, the researchers observed a photovoltaic effect in the nanotube diode device. According to GE this discovery could lead to significant breakthroughs in solar cells that make them more efficient and a more viable alternative in the mainstream energy market.
Intel unveiled its new ViiV (rhymes with 'five') technology at IDF, which combines Intel's in-house software, processor and chipset, to enable a system to perform home entertainment tasks with ease. Intel said features of ViiV-enabled 'convergence' computers will be quick on-and-off, similar to the current entertainment devices, 5.1 surround sound with optional 7.1 surround sound support, and automatic transcoding of media files to ensure compatibility. The technology will be integrated into set-top boxes designed to match stereos and DVD players, as well as standard desktop PCs running Windows XP Media Center Edition. The processors will be mixed 32- and 64-bit and all PCs based on Intel Viiv technology will ship with a remote control.
Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have developed a new technique to enable cheaper solar cells. Based on what it calls 'dirty silicon', which is laden with metal impurities and defects, but abundant and cheaper, they have devised a new approach for its use. Nearly 90% of photovoltaic cells are made from a refined and purified form of silicon, and manufacturing techniques to remove impurities are expensive. So instead of taking the impurities out, they are manipulated in a way that reduces their detrimental impact on the solar cell's efficiency. By simply varying the cooling rate of the silicon, the distribution of the metal impurities can be clustered, and efficiency is much improved, they said.
IO2 Technology has launched a display that projects video images onto 'thin air'. The Heliodisplay is claimed to be able to display any video source in full, high-resolution colour in free space, without the need for a screen. Viewers can walk around, or even through, the floating image, said the company. Heliodisplays are being offered for sale on its website that can project images from 56 cm to 107 cm in diagonal size. The user can also move an image using their finger, instead of a mouse, to interact with display, says the company.
Organic light emitting diode (OLED) company Novaled has developed a red-top emission OLED that it claims produces a record 10 lm/W power efficiency, and can operate for 100 000 hours at 500 cd/m². This power efficiency for the very deep red (CIE colour co-ordination 0,68/0,32) OLED translates into 14 cd/A current efficiency and 3 V operating voltage. OLEDs that emit light away from the substrate (top-emission type) are a key feature for future OLED applications. For displays, top-emission OLEDs increase the available light by up to 50%. For lighting applications, they possibly make cheap non-transparent and flexible substrates.
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