Southern Africa
Altron announced its interim results for the six months ended 31 August 2006. Altron has shown exceptional growth with a 52% increase in headline earnings per share, a 20% increase in revenue to R8,3 bn from R7,0 bn for the prior period, with operating profit increasing by 42% to R711m from R502m.
Saab Grintek recently completed its contract to install communication equipment on 25 patrol boats belonging to the Nigerian Army. The vessels form part of project 'Restore Hope' - a peacekeeping mission by the Nigerian Army in the Niger Delta. The boats are equipped with radio transceivers supplied by Saab Grintek. The deal was secured through Saab Grintek's Teaming Partner, Suncraft International. Active field trials were undertaken to ensure the equipment met stringent military operating specifications. Tests included a water test where the equipment was submerged under water for 15 minutes. After being retrieved, the equipment is expected to work flawlessly. Similarly, a drop test was required where the equipment is dropped from a one-storey height and must remain fully operational.
Pre-paid metering contracts have been awarded to Saab Grintek by Witbank Housing Corporation and City Power to supply Tasbert Park in Witbank, and Alexandra in Johannesburg with pre-paid meters. These contracts include converting an existing 5000 meters in Witbank to prepaid meters, as well as supplying and installing prepaid meters to 60 000 homes in Alexandra. The pre-paid meter system enables remote and bulk meter reading, vending and pre-payment. Communication is carried out via a combination of power line carrier communications (PLCC) trunked radio, GSM, GPRS and RS485 communications to optimise operational costs. It also reduces the cost of, and eases, the installation process.
Siemens has announced that Pete da Silva, CEO of Siemens Southern Africa, is leaving the company in November after nearly 30 years of service to head A1 Grand Prix worldwide. Rudi Lamprecht, chairman of Siemens Southern Africa, said that since da Silva took over the CEO position from Klaus Döring in March 2005, he grew order entry by 40% to nearly R10 bn. Sigi Proebstl, who is currently head of Group Strategy for southern Africa would succeed da Silva, said Lambrecht. Siemens also announced that Bheki Khumalo, who joined the company in 2005 from the state president's office, will vacate his chair as executive director Corporate Affairs and as a member of the Executive Committee, at the end of the year. Khumalo will be joining Sasol as group general manager with responsibility for government, Corporate Affairs.
Overseas
Business
Intel has posted third quarter net income of $1,3 bn, up 47% sequentially but down 35% year-to-year. Intel posted third quarter revenue of $8,7 bn, up 9% sequentially compared with Q2, but down 12% year-to-year compared with Q3 of 2005. Intel said third quarter sequential revenue was above normal seasonal patterns in the Americas, EMEA and Japan regions following a lower-than-seasonal second quarter for the company.
Companies
Google is to buy video sharing Internet company YouTube for $1,65 bn. Although Google has its own video search engine, Google Video, which also allows users to upload their own clips, Google said YouTube would continue to operate independently 'to preserve its successful brand and passionate community.'
Royal Philips Electronics is selling the remainder of its mobile phone manufacturing operations to China Electronics Corporation (CEC), which will assume responsibility for Philips' remaining mobile telephones business.
Kulicke & Soffa Industries has signed an agreement to acquire Alphasem, a German supplier of die-bonder equipment, for $30m.
Symmetricom, a supplier of precise time and frequency products and services, has acquired Timing Solutions, a company that provides high performance time and frequency products and services for government, aerospace and military markets. Symmetricom paid approximately $8m.
Vitelec Electronics, part of Emerson Connectivity Solutions, is combining its operation with Chelmsford, UK-based Midwest Microwave International, a supplier of low-loss RF cable assemblies and microwave components.
Japan's Hitachi has announced that it has signed a basic agreement with automotive entertainment systems provider Clarion, and will purchase additional shares of Clarion through a takeover bid, and make Clarion a subsidiary of Hitachi. Following the takeover, in-vehicle information systems vendor Xanavi Informatics, an Hitachi subsidiary, would become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Clarion, Hitachi said.
Cypress Semiconductor has announced that it has spun out its PC clock business into a new and independent company called Spectra Linear. The transaction calls for the transfer of Cypress's frequency timing generators and buffers optimised for desktop and notebook computers, computer servers and memory modules to Spectra Linear. It does not include Cypress' general purpose clock offerings of fixed and programmable timing products.
Payment organisation JCB, in cooperation with CCV Holland, Gemalto, KPN, Nokia, NXP, PaySquare, and ViVOtech, have launched a near field communication (NFC) mobile payment pilot project in Amsterdam. Following initial trials in September, the pilot service, called Mobile J/Speedy, is now being rolled out to a broader group of JCB's customers. At selected 'PaySquare' merchants, cardholders can securely purchase items by just holding their Nokia cellphone with NFC chip close to a contactless NFC reader/writer.
Google is converting its California-based headquarters into a solar electricity system with a total capacity of 1,6 megawatts. EI Solutions, the systems integration arm of Energy Innovations will undertake the task. Google said its headquarters will be the largest solar installation on any corporate campus in the United States. The project will involve 9212 solar panels provided by Sharp Electronics.
Interactive Television Networks, a provider of Internet Protocol TV systems and networks, has selected NXP's STB810 set-top box chip platform to build IP set-top box devices for mass deployment in the US.
Industry
After years of anticipation, global positioning system (GPS) technology should finally arrive in a significant number of GSM mobile handsets in 2007, according to market research analyst ABI Research, which cites several factors for the expected rise of GPS in GSM and WCDMA handsets. Among these factors are government regulations covering location technology for emergency services - such as the FCC-mandated E911 in the US - as well as a recognised demand for location-based services (LBS). The report also concludes that 25% of WCDMA handsets will incorporate GPS by the end of 2008.
The power semiconductor market remained flat in 2005 at $11,3 bn following 2004's massive 25% expansion, but the mid- to long-term prospects for the sector are promising, driven by a myriad of consumer applications, according to market research group IMS. The power discretes market (including transistors, thyristors and rectifiers) is predicted to nearly double in size over the next 10 years, whilst IMS expects the power module market to have even stronger growth.
The Asia/Pacific region is leading the global revolution of IPTV in infrastructure deployments, applications development, and subscriber adoption, reports In-Stat. The region's broadband penetration and regulatory support are helping to foster this fastest-growing IPTV market in the world, according to the high-tech market research firm. By 2011, the Asia/Pacific market is expected to reach 39 million IPTV subscribers, with revenue reaching $8,1bn.
Research and Markets forecasts that WiMAX users will reach 14,9 million in 2009. Most of the WiMAX deployments across the world are still in a trial phase providing only high-speed Internet service but, in future, the largest markets for WiMAX will be for mobile applications, it says. WiMAX is expected to become a predominant portion of the broadband wireless access market by 2009 because of the wide support it has achieved from leading equipment vendors.
According to a new research brief from ABI Research, mobile network operators are facing an increasing demand for data over their radio access networks, which could lead to extra costs unless new techniques are used to improve spectral efficiency. Similar demands are also likely from in-building wireless LANs and pico/femto cells, as IPTV and other bandwidth-hungry services are deployed both in the home and the enterprise. Smart antenna systems (SAS), regarded as a research novelty until recently, can be used to greatly improve radio access network and in-building wireless performance, notes ABI.
The number of households watching high-definition (HD) TV programming continues to rise rapidly, reports In-Stat. Households with HDTV service are projected to grow from 15 million in mid-2006 to 20,3 million at the end of 2006. However, this impressive household growth is tempered by the fact that it is occurring in just a few countries. More positively, several countries have introduced HDTV service this year. As of mid-2006, the US and Japan accounted for 91% of all worldwide HDTV households. Other countries with significant numbers of HDTV households include Canada, Australia, and South Korea. In-Stat said that consumer demand to see the World Cup in HD has served as a catalyst for the start of HDTV services in several European countries.
A soft pricing environment has prompted Gartner to lower its NAND flash-memory growth forecast by nearly $1,5 bn in 2006, now projecting it to be around $13 bn in 2006.
Network-based personal video recording (nPVR) stands as a technology that could radically change pricing metrics, advertising, and content distribution on video networks. According to a new ABI Research study, once the technology is proven and content providers sign on, nPVR will help to fuel the overall digital video recording (DVR) market, which will grow from about 20 million subscribers last year to more than 250 million in 2011. DVRs have been around for some time, allowing users to record program content and replay it at will, like a VCR. The question in the coming years is how much of that function will shift to the operators' networks. The nPVR model allows any two-way digital set-top box with a proper software upgrade to act as a DVR: the content is stored on a server in the network.
A new Strategy Analytics report finds that rapid product development from leading semiconductor players will enable 48 million ultra-low-cost handsets (ULCH) shipments by the end of 2007. Along with Texas Instruments and Infineon, other chip makers, including Freescale, Qualcomm and Philips, have rapidly made single chip solutions available. Strategy Analytics says that these new products will meet the dual needs of driving new subscriber growth in emerging markets and creating a stronger profit opportunity in entry-tier segments for small handset vendors.
Although traditional video-on-demand services may not be growing particularly rapidly, the introduction of time shifting, network PVR, and mobile video will propel the demand for VOD technology as the number of concurrent, time-shifted streams of video grows rapidly. In fact, according to ABI, concurrent VOD streams worldwide will explode from 1,67 million in 2005 to 163 million in 2011.
Amid an ongoing DRAM price-fixing probe, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is now looking into the SRAM market, according to reports. The DOJ has, for some years, been investigating alleged price fixing among DRAM manufacturers between 1999 and 2003.
The Numerical Mathematics Consortium has announced the latest revision to a technical specification introduced earlier this year that defines an open mathematics semantics standard for numerical algorithm development. This update includes newly-ratified functions from classes that include polynomials and vector analysis. In addition to the new function definitions, the consortium resolved significant technical issues that simplify ratification of new functions. The founding companies of the Numerical Mathematics Consortium - which include INRIA, Maplesoft, Mathsoft and National Instruments - established the organisation in 2005 to create a specification that facilitates re-use and portability of numeric algorithms. The latest revision is available at www.nmconsortium.org.
Amsterdam is rolling out a city-wide glass fibre network with the objective of creating an open and future-secure communication infrastructure. Called Glasvezelnet Amsterdam, the network starts in the Zeeburg district of Amsterdam, followed by Oost/Watergraafsmeer and Osdorp. The network is designed to provide a new and advanced communication infrastructure for the inhabitants of Amsterdam, giving them a wider choice of new service packages including telephony, TV and Internet access at competitive prices. In addition to the usual network services, the intention is to provide additional applications with added social value via the fibre network, such as tele-care or tele-learning.
Technology
NEC Electronics has developed a chip-set for optical drives that it says would bridge the incompatible Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD formats. The chipset can drive and process data from BD, HD DVD, DVD and CD discs, according to NEC. Its 'SCOMBO' chipset comprises two LSI chips: a digital signal processor; and an analog signal processor that controls the optical pickup and reads out data from discs.
Group IV Semiconductor has announced a revolutionary design to build a silicon-based solid-state light bulb that could last 20-years and use 90% less energy than today's standard light bulbs. In solid-state lamps, semiconductors such as LEDs convert electricity directly into light. But LEDs have not achieved the brightness levels of conventional lights, and the compound semiconductor materials on which LEDs are based remain expensive. With the silicon approach, a thin film of nanocrystals is embedded in a silicon chip. A current is passed through a conductive layer to reach and impact the nanocrystals, energising electrons into an excited state. As the electrons settle back to normal, energy is given off in the form of a photon (light). Millions of such reactions create a continuous light source. According to the company, its silicon light engine will enable the creation of lamps as bright as their conventional counterparts and more efficient than fluorescents.
Japan's Kyocera (Kyoto) has claimed a new world record of 18,5% energy conversion efficiency for a 150 x 150 mm multicrystalline silicon solar cell. Prior records for energy conversion efficiency in multicrystalline cells of this size were also set by Kyocera, including 14,5% in 1989, 17,1% in 1996, and 17,7% in 2004, according to the company.
Australian company Arasor International and its US partner Novalux have developed what they claim to be the world's first laser-based television, which could replace plasma and LCD televisions in the consumer market. Arasor produces the unique optoelectronic chip central to the laser projection device being developed by Novalux. According to reports, the technology offers double the colour gamut and clarity at half the cost and a quarter of the power consumption of comparable large LCD and plasma televisions.
Researchers at MIT are developing tiny gas-turbine engines inside coin sized silicon chips in an effort to create power for laptops, cellphones, radios and other electronic devices. The resulting device, they say, could run 10 times longer than a battery of the same weight. Using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) techonology, the miniature microengine would be made using six bonded silicon wafers in which the compressor, combustion chamber, spinning turbine, and other necessary features are pre-etched into the individual layers of silicon. Inside the tiny combustion chamber, the fuel and air mix and burn, and the turbine blades, made of microfabricated materials, spin at about 20 000 rpm. A mini-generator then produces 10 W of power.
Sony Electronics has debuted a new digital version of its Walkman player with built-in noise-cancelling technology. The NW-S700F Walkman player comes with an FM tuner, a 50 hour battery life with 'quick-charge' feature, and a built-in microphone that Sony claims reduces most ambient noise.
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