Southern Africa
With continued significant growth in the Middle East and Africa region, Motorola announced an expansive educational engagement strategy for 2007, which includes larger targets for recruitment and internships as well as curriculum development and thought leadership in business and engineering programmes. It said these efforts will include the expansion of its University Relations programme across the region, in order to attract new talent and meet anticipated demand. In 2006, Motorola recruited more than 110 university graduates from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Pakistan, Nigeria, and South Africa, while engaging 85 interns in work experience schemes. In South Africa, Motorola is currently putting 26 engineers and technical graduates through a two-year development programme. Successful graduates will be given permanent roles in its African operations, it said.
Altech has partnered with Samsung Electronics of Korea, to trial a Wimax broadband network in South Africa. Following its successful test licence application to ICASA, Altech and Samsung will build a network in Gauteng that will be focused on the wireless delivery of triple-play services, including video streaming, Internet access and Voice Over IP. The trial network is expected to be commissioned in June 2007.
Global growth consulting company Frost & Sullivan has broadened its global presence by opening a new office in Cape Town to serve the sub-Saharan African region. Frost & Sullivan says that the new office will help ensure that its clients enjoy a truly global perspective of the markets in which they compete. For information contact Patrick Cairns, +27 (0)21 680 3274, [email protected].
Altech has announced it has secured in excess of R400m worth of new orders as it moves into the 2007 financial year. These include a significant new customer for digital settop-boxes in India, additional Multichoice orders on the back of the successful 2006 PVR rollout, an asset tracking order for Spoornet, and an emergency service Digital Tetra wireless communication system for the SA Police Services force in Cape Town. Altech said the settop-box deal in India is one of its largest ever.
Five job-seekers have been selected to participate in an experiential training and internship programme at Sahara Computers & Electronics based in Delhi, India. This is a six-month international ICT training and skills development programme for young South African women graduates. The move is part of the government's Joint initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA), a working project implemented by the IDT to prioritise skills for the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa. The trainees will be placed directly into the work environment where they will gain first hand experience at several levels of operation within a global ICT-focused company. The programme is part of an ongoing skills development and job creation initiative spearheaded by the Office of the deputy president in partnership with corporate South Africa on the identified priority scarce skills in the country.
Comtest, authorised local distributor of Fluke test and measurement tools, has appointed a Fluke dealer in Kampala, Uganda. Quick Band has been appointed a value added reseller/dealer for Comtest and is now the authorised Ugandan distributor of Fluke products.
CST Electronics has moved to the Linbro Business Park, Sandton, on the corner of Galaxy Avenue and Electron Street.
Overseas
Business
NXP Semiconductors said in an interim statement, that it expects a sequential fall in sales in the range of 7-13% during Q1 2007 compared to Q4 2006. NXP said sales during the three months ended 31 December were 1,19 bn Euros, a 12,4% drop compared to the same period in 2005. The company said its fourth quarter sales reflects the softening of the market for chipsets for high-end mobile phones and the fast transitioning from analog CRT TV - where NXP holds a 30% marketshare - to digital TV, an area in which NXP is still strengthening its position.
Agilent Technologies posted a GAAP net income of $150m on revenue of $1,28 bn, for Q1 of fiscal 2007. This $150m net income was up 14% sequentially but down 95% year-to-year. During the same period of 2006, Agilent posted earnings of $2,82 bn, thanks to the sale of its semiconductor products business. Fiscal first quarter revenue of $1,28 bn was down 9% sequentially but up 6% year-to-year.
Companies
Chipidea Microelectrónica, a leader in analog/mixed-signal subsystems and intellectual property has announced it will acquire Nordic Semiconductor's Data Converter IP business unit for $6 m in cash. With this acquisition, Nordic says it is transitioning from being a provider of design services and IP, to a fabless semiconductor supplier of standard RF components.
Epcos has acquired Aktiv Sensor of Germany, an electronics company that specialises in pressure sensors and systems. Epcos is a leading manufacturer of sensors and systems for temperature measurement. With this acquisition it said it will now be able to offer temperature and pressure sensors from a single source.
Tantalum and aluminium capacitor manufacturer Kemet has announced it intends to buy Evox Rifa of Finland, a maker of film and electrolytic capacitors. Evox Rifa's strength is in the design and production of customised capacitor products.
Infinera has acquired planar lightwave specialist, Little Optics.
LSI Logic has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SiliconStor, a developer of silicon solutions for enterprise storage networks, for approximately $55 m. SiliconStor provides storage technology focused on the SATA and serial attached SCSI markets. The acquisition aligns with LSI's strategy to offer server and storage system customers complete solutions including IC controllers, ROC (RAID-on-Chip), expanders, RAID software, and host bus adapters for the fast-growing SAS infrastructure.
Vecima Networks, a Canadian WiMax specialist, has acquired Spectrum Signal Processing, a company active in software-defined radio for military applications.
ESS Technology has sold its HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc DVD technologies and related assets to SiS Holding, a Hong Kong-based electronics distributor, for $13,5m. ESS said it would cease operation of its camera phone business and pursue licensing of its image sensor technology and patents.
IPextreme, a semiconductor technology licensing company, and National Semiconductor, have signed an intellectual-property distribution agreement. Under the terms, IPextreme will sell and support a broad selection of National's IP through IPextreme's IP Commercialisation Program. The initial offerings will include National's Advanced Microcontoller Bus Architecture (AMBA) 2.0 peripherals and the CompactRISC CR16 processor.
Alcatel-Lucent has announced it has invested an undisclosed amount in WiMAX semiconductor supplier Sequans Communications. The companies have been working towards producing low-cost end-user devices based on Sequans' chips and tailored to the need for broadband access in developing countries.
Frequency control specialist, Euroquartz and Statek, a designer and manufacturer of ultra-miniature crystals, oscillators and sensors, have signed an agreement appointing Euroquartz as an official specialist distributor for Statek products.
Industry
According to a new report from NanoMarkets, the market for OLEDs used in displays and lighting applications is expected to reach $10,9 bn by 2012 and grow to $15,5 bn by the year 2014. The advantages of OLEDs include; energy efficiency, high brightness, rapid video switching capability, low weight and suitability for use on flexible substrates. NanoMarkets expects OLED-based displays for mobile phones and other portable devices to reach $7,2 bn in revenues by 2014. OLEDs are also now beginning to find opportunities in the lighting business. NanoMarkets expects this to exceed $1,0 bn by 2014.
By the end of 2008, more than 1 billion Wi-Fi chipsets will have rolled into the market, according to a recent report by ABI Research. In 2012, annual shipments will top 1 billion chipsets, according to ABI estimates. In 2006, almost 200 million Wi-Fi chipsets were sold.
According to a new Strategy Analytics report, France's new 'TV of the Future' law has taken an important step towards high definition television (HDTV) on the digital terrestrial television (DTT) platform by allocating capacity for HD channels and mandating HD tuners in HD-Ready TV sets. Most other European countries are still at the discussion stage regarding the introduction of HDTV and this could put increased pressure on them to accelerate their own policies towards HD on DTT platforms, it reckons.
NEC Electronics has announced a three-year restructuring plan. NEC said it will consolidate its nine front-end manufacturing lines in Japan to four, as it will be exiting the structured ASIC and single-chip cellphone sectors.
Infineon Technologies has closed its research and development operation, Infineon Technologies Savan, in Netanya, Israel. The centre focused on UWB (ulta wide band) solutions.
A federal jury in San Diego has ordered Microsoft to pay $1,5 bn to Alcatel-Lucent in a patent dispute over MP3 audio technology used in Windows. Microsoft said that it believes that the verdict is completely unsupported by the law or the facts and intends to seek relief.
The GSM Association (GSMA) has published a White Paper on near field communications (NFC). The GSMA said it aims to develop a common vision for mobile NFC services, promote the development of a stable and efficient ecosystem, and prevent market fragmentation. One of the goals of the NFC programme is to build on the secure authentication and identity relationship that operators have with their customers through the UICC/SIM card, which is situated inside the handset and contains users' unique profiles and information. See www.gsmworld.com/documents/nfc_services_0207.pdf.
Cisco and Apple have announced that they have settled their dispute over the use of the iPhone name and agreed to share the trademark on their products throughout the world. Each side will dismiss any pending actions regarding the trademark.
Twelve leading mobile operators have selected a slim, multimedia phone developed by LG Electronics as the winning handset to spearhead the GSM Association's '3G for All' campaign. By agreeing on a common set of requirements, the 12 operators will enable LG to achieve major economies of scale in manufacturing, logistics and marketing. According to GSMA the LG-KU250 handset will be available at a wholesale price about 30% less than the typical entry-level 3G phone and fully-competitive with the multimedia second-generation handsets on sale today.
Technology
Intel demonstrated its Teraflop Research Chip - code-named Polaris - at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference. The 80-core chip crunches 1 trillion floating-point operations/second when running at a 3,2 GHz clock speed and consumes 62 W (0,95 V) - yielding a record 16 Gflops/W. By clocking up to 5,6 GHz, the chip achieves 1,8 teraflops - although 80% faster, this increases power consumption fourfold to 265 W (1,35 V), giving 6,8 Gflops/W. Intel said this loss in energy efficiency underscores the motivation to scale by utilising more and more cores, instead of just increasing the frequency. See more at tinyurl.com/yqwkyo.
At the recent International Solid State Circuits Conference, IBM detailed a method for tripling the amount of memory on a single microprocessor, potentially doubling its performance. With the advent of multicore chips, memory has become an increasingly critical aspect of microprocessor performance. This prototype eDRAM, (embedded dynamic RAM) chip, contains over 12 million bits and high-performance logic. IBM said it will be available in IBM its products beginning next year. IBM expects to use the technique on its future power and cell processors as well as have it available for ASIC customers.
IMEC unveiled a wideband software-defined radio (SDR) transceiver at ISSCC, that it said is widely programmable to operate with all current and future cellular, WLAN, WPAN, broadcast and positioning standards in the frequency range between the 174 MHz and 6 GHz. Named Scaldio, the multimode SDR transceiver has a power consumption and CMOS chip area comparable to current state-of-the-art single mode radios. The highly integrated reconfigurable front-end uses only 1,2 V supply voltage and depending on its configuration has a power consumption of 60 to 120 mA - which is comparable to a single-mode radio. Each block can be digitally adjusted over a wide range of specifications through a novel type of analog network-on-chip. Using these different configuration 'knobs', the overall front-end performance (RF carrier frequency, channel bandwidth, noise figure, linearity, filter characteristic, etc) and power can be tuned to the specific requirements of different standards.
The US Darpa's (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Grand Challenge in the desert has gone urban. The Grand Challenge is an autonomous vehicle race sponsored by Darpa. This year, the teams must construct autonomous vehicles to navigate an unfamiliar urban environment in the shortest time possible. The robot racers will try to complete a simulated 96 km urban course in the shortest possible time. The course will feature urban obstacles, such as trees and buildings, traffic signs and other moving vehicles. The contestants must obey traffic regulations. As well as merging with other traffic, changing lanes and observing stop signs, the robo-participants will have to pull into a parking lot for a short period. The race takes place in November.
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