Southern Africa
Reunert reported earnings for the six months ended 31 March 2006. Turnover increased by 19% from R3276m a year ago to R3911m, resulting in operating profits improving by 23% to R524m. The buoyant economic climate in South Africa helped considerably towards it achieving revenue growth approaching 20%, according to the company. In its electronics division the company said it improved operating profits by 24% from R311m to R386m, as revenue increased by 17% to R3466m.
Gateway Communications has announced that it has completed a $1,4m upgrade and expansion of its international long distance network, enabling it to link mobile networks across over 30 African countries and to connect with its European network. According to Gateway, the packet-switched technology enables it to route calls with just one satellite 'hop' and thus save 50% on each call. It says that this cost saving can be passed on to African mobile network carriers, helping Gateway to keep African dollars within Africa. Gateway can now efficiently expand its global VoIP footprint in new markets by carrying traffic from any mobile networks, converting it locally to VoIP, and re-transmitting it over satellite between mobile networks. This is all remotely managed by its Belgium and South African network management centres for global connectivity.
Since delivering the first few RFID-radar systems to clients in Europe, Trolley Scan has reported interesting feedback from potential users. Some potential applications of this technology have been:
* Continuously tracking the location of 20 000 people in a skyscraper using multiple RFID readers and RFID-radars, wanting position accuracy at any time to a few metres.
* Monitoring the use and location in an open air parking and loading bay of a public utility, by tracking the instantaneous location of 500 vehicles, using a cascade of up to nine RFID-radar systems.
* Monitoring the location of a number of participants at close range as part of a work study.
* Monitoring multiple works of art in a museum in an open space by measuring the exact range between the RFID-radar and the transponder once per second, to great accuracy.
Honeywell has appointed Jason Whitehead to the position of regional general manager of Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS) Africa.
Sentech has announced the appointment of two new board members. Nandi Sihlali has joined as a non-executive member of the board and Mohammed Siddique Cassim fills the position of chief financial officer.
Overseas
Business
Hewlett-Packard has posted a GAAP profit of $1,5 bn on sales of $22,6 bn, in its second fiscal 2006 quarter, which compares with earnings of $1,0 bn, on sales of $21,6 bn in the year-ago quarter.
Agilent Technologies had sales of $1,43 bn during its second fiscal quarter, up 12% from last year. Second quarter GAAP income from continuing operations was $131m, compared with $53m, in last year's second quarter. Included in the results are $22m of net charges related principally to the planned spinoff of Semiconductor Test Solutions (STS) and the reduction of Agilent's infrastructure costs. Agilent reported orders of $1,59 bn for the second quarter, 21% above one year ago.
Companies
EADS Test & Services has acquired IFR France. IFR specialises in software systems for aircraft management. IFR will become a 100% subsidiary of EADS Test & Services. Through this acquisition, the company hopes to extend its product line to include maintenance information systems, thereby coupling its test systems with logistics information systems, which are increasingly being used by fleet operators.
Agilent Technologies has announced a reorganisation of its Electronic Measurements Group (EMG), merging the company's Operations Support Systems Group (OSSG) with two other existing businesses within EMG. The new business unit will be named Network and Digital Solutions (NDS). With this move the company hopes to significantly strengthen its position in the wireless-convergence and digital markets.
Evolution Robotics has announced that Bandai Networks is using its ViPR visual pattern recognition technology in its 'Search by Camera! ER Search' (ER Search) mobile phone service. ER Search uses ViPR technology to allow, among other things, users of mobile phones with built-in cameras to make product purchases and get product information simply by taking a photo of images in magazines, shopping catalogues, product packaging, posters and so forth. It works by using the ViPR image recognition engine integrated with the cellphone to process the image captured by the camera phone, and then uses the extracted information to look-up an extensive database of candidate objects residing on a remote server. The ER Search service will be available soon in Japan to NTT DoCoMo's customers using its new handset line, dubbed the FOMA N902iS.
Pelikon, a spin-out from Cambridge Consultants that develops and makes inorganic electroluminescent displays including flexible, plastic versions, has announced that it has signed its first major deal in the Far East with Hong Kong-based consumer electronics group Sweda. Sweda will incorporate a Pelikon printed segmented electroluminescent display (pSEL) into a new product. The company's pSEL displays allow thin-flexible displays of high contrast to be cut and shaped, to fit curved and moulded cases and enclosures.
Industry
Gartner has raised its forecast for annual growth in the semiconductor market in 2006 to 10,6% from 9,5%, based on increased demand for PCs. The market for semiconductor chips is now expected to reach $259,5 bn in 2006, up from $234,6 bn in 2005.
Worldwide sales of cellular phones, which totalled $110 bn in 2005, will grow by 23% in 2006, according to a report by market research firm In-Stat. The study predicts that sales will continue to grow in coming years, although at a slower rate, and will reach $250 bn in 2011. By 2011, the study noted, only 52 other countries will have bigger economies than the mobile handset industry would have, if it were a country.
According to Strategy Analytics, nearly a fifth of broadband subscribers across the US and Europe now use Wi-Fi to share their Internet connection between PCs and other devices. The report reveals that 7% of all households, or 19 million, now have a wireless network. The US leads the field with 8,4% penetration, followed by the Nordic region with 7,9%, the UK with 6,1% and Germany with 5,1%.
At least 25 million machines will be connected to mobile networks in Europe by 2009, according to Swedish market analyst firm Berg Insight. Europe currently has about 5 million wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) wireless connections, it says. Utility meters and vehicles are identified as the segments having the greatest potential.
Led by the growing popularity of camera phones, the market for flash cards is expected to grow in value from $8 bn in 2003 to more than $27 bn by 2008, according to market analyst Semico Research. Semico believes that digital cellphones and card-based camcorders (CBCs) will offer significant opportunities for card manufacturers in the near future.
The results have been released of a recent global opinion survey to assess trust of online transactions and awareness of cybersecurity measures (www.itu.int/wtd). Based on data from about 400 respondents, the survey found that opinion was evenly divided concerning safety of communication networks, including the Internet, with 51% finding them safe, and 48% considering them unsafe. Only 1% found modern communication networks very safe while 55% considered them highly unsafe. Yet, as many as 60% reported feeling comfortable surfing the Internet and conducting online transactions, with 40% experiencing some degree of discomfort. 56% of respondents believed that consideration of privacy was respected to some degree, while 44% felt it was poorly respected.
Frequency Control Insights (FCI) has released its findings on the crystal and oscillator market which show that the market grew 6,5% in 2005 to $3,1 bn. FCI is forecasting solid market growth, with this sector reaching $4,6 bn in 2010. Growth will be driven by a number of different application areas. It notes: temperature compensated crystal oscillator (TCXO) content in mobile handsets will increase with W-CDMA handset growth and GPS integration into handsets; growth in wireless connectivity solutions, such as WLAN, Bluetooth, UWB, and ZigBee will increase high-stability MHz crystal usage; in the PC sector, hard disk drives are moving to a Serial ATA (SATA) interface requiring the use of MHz crystals, as opposed to Parallel ATA (PATA) which required cheap ceramic resonators; Even in the automotive industry, MHz crystal content is increasing as automobiles integrate more electronics and tyre pressure monitoring systems.
Creative Technology has filed a lawsuit against Apple Computer for allegedly infringing a Creative patent governing the user interface in portable media players, including those used in Apple's iPod, iPod Nano and iPod Mini.
Sun Microsystems has announced that it will make its Java software available on an open-source basis and embrace Linux broadly on its Sparc-based computers.
Technology
RadioScape has announced the development of a software-controlled, single-chip RF front-end that can handle six frequency bands for use in digital and analog radio applications. The RF chip combines with a standard DSP chip that runs RadioScape's baseband digital radio software and also controls the RFIC to form a two-chip solution. This reduces significantly the power consumption and size of modules compared with current generation designs. RadioScape claims the device is the first such part that can handle six such very different bands - Band III and L-Band for DAB; medium wave, long wave and short wave for AM and Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM); and Band II for FM.
InvenSense has developed what it believes is the world's smallest dual-axis gyroscope for use in addressing image quality problems related to hand jitter in camera phones. As a single-chip silicon device based on MEMS technology, InvenSense's solution is said to be over five times smaller than competing devices that typically use an older piezo-type technology.
Xilinx has announced that it has started sampling its first FPGAs made using its 65 nm manufacturing process technology. The Virtex-5 LX FPGAs are the first of four domain-optimised platforms to be launched in 65 nm. The company claims they deliver 30% higher performance, consume 45% less area and provide the industry's lowest dynamic power - 35% lower than previous generation 90 nm FPGAs. The Virtex-5 LX family consists of six devices offering up to 330 000 logic cells, 1200 user I/Os, 10 Mbits of block RAM, and 3,2 Mbits of distributed RAM, as well as numerous IP blocks.
Infineon Technologies has started sampling a new plastic optical fibre (POF) to Ethernet transceiver and related reference design aimed at video home networking applications. The company says the transceiver and related single chip Fibre-to-Fast Ethernet converter provides one of the most cost-effective and reliable solutions for such applications, which it says will be a main driver for IPTV and HDTV services. The transceiver supports Fast Ethernet transmission at 100 Mbps using standard POF wire with 1 mm core.
LG Electronics has announced it will begin producing 50 inch (127 cm) plasma display panels (PDP) using a technology that slices three panels from a single glass substrate.
MIT's Media Lab is developing what the university claims is one of the world's largest data storage arrays, to be used for its Human Speechome Project. Video and audio data will be collected and analysed to research early childhood cognitive development. The array is based on Zetera's Z-SAN technology. The computing infrastructure is expected to be composed of more than 3000 Seagate SATA drives, more than 300 Hammer Z-Rack storage enclosures, more than 100 Marvell-based 10G/GbE switches, and about 400 blade processors.
Applied Plasmonics claims to have developed a way for silicon to generate light of any colour using an array of nano-antennas and an electron beam. Devising a method to get silicon to emit light facilitates integrating optical and logic circuits on a single silicon chip, eliminating the need for a separate light emitting device, thus reducing system size, power and cost. Applied Plasmonics' approach uses a technology called 'plasmon wave propagation'. On the chip surface, one or more arrays of nano-dimensioned antennas of specific height and spacing are fabricated using standard lithographic and etch technology. When an electron beam is directed across the surface of a chip, accelerated by a high-voltage bias source, it passes over the top of the antenna array and excites the natural surface plasma on the tips of the array to generate photons, thus creating light. According to the company, the antenna arrays allow any specific wavelength or combination of wavelengths of light to be generated.
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