Southern Africa
Angola Telecom has selected Ericsson to be the sole supplier of a US$70 million fibre-optic submarine network linking six coastal provinces in Angola. Expected to be completed by the end of 2008, the new network will supply the coastal region with uninterrupted telecommunications and connectivity at an economical price. Ericsson will provide the entire infrastructure, including the fibre-optic cable, transmission equipment and services.
International safety company, MSA, has announced the appointment of Luis Fernando Flores as managing director of MSA in South Africa. Luis Fernando aims to double the size of the African subsidiary in three years through focusing the goal that has seen MSA become the large safety company that it is - to save people's lives. According to Luis Fernando, South Africa is MSA's third biggest market after the US and Germany, and is thus an important one for MSA. It is also the gateway into the rest of Africa, which has a long way to go in improving its general workplace safety record.
Overseas
Business
Following a recent report by Lazard Capital Markets predicting strong quarterly results for Micron as a result of strength in NAND memory chips used in certain electronic devices, shares in the company rose more than 6% in one day. The report expects Micron to report a loss per share of $0,12 and revenue of $1,46 billion, significantly better than consensus expectations for a per-share loss of $0,23 cents on revenue of $1,39 billion.
According to a report by EETimes.com, Toshiba has reported that it is unable to meet demand for its NAND Flash memory devices and is sold out until December. Toshiba has apparently confirmed reports that it can only meet 70% of its order demand from customers. The company, which is turning the remaining business away, also sees a disappointing flat-to-down scenario in terms of average selling prices (ASPs) for NAND.
Qualcomm recently raised its quarterly earnings forecast, but its shares fell after the news as some investors had expected more. The company is now predicting net earnings per share of $0,64 to $0,65 for the fiscal fourth quarter ending 30 September, up from a previous estimate of $0,41 to $0,43. The higher estimate includes a tax benefit of $0,19 per share and a buy-back of $1,2 billion of its shares during the current quarter.
Texas Instruments has announced that its board of directors has authorised the company to repurchase $5 billion of its common stock. Additionally, the company plans to raise its quarterly cash dividend by 25%. TI's new quarterly dividend rate will be $0,10 per share, resulting in annual dividend payments of $0,40 per share. This most recent action brings the Board's total stock repurchase authorisation since September 2004 to $20 billion. This is the fourth consecutive year of dividend increases for TI and the second increase in 2007, and the company says it has paid dividends to its shareholders on an uninterrupted basis since 1 June, 1962.
Companies
Avnet has entered into an agreement to acquire the Berlin, Germany-based passive components distributor Betronik, subject to final approval by the German anti-trust authority. The newly formed business will operate within Avnet Electronics Marketing EMEA under the Avnet Time brand. Betronik reported calendar year 2006 revenues of approximately $40 million.
Infineon Technologies has announced that it has signed an agreement with Motorola to develop a new multimode, single-chip 3G radio frequency (RF) transceiver based on Infineon's SMARTi UE chip. Motorola selected Infineon to develop the new RF chip to address the growing market for 3G services by offering maximum HSDPA and HSUPA performance, efficient power consumption and slim design. Terms of the development agreement were not disclosed.
Samsung Electronics has said that it will cooperate with a US government probe into possible anticompetitive practices in the NAND Flash memory chip market. It is not clear whether Samsung has been subpoenaed or is a subject of the investigation.
Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE), a semiconductor assembly and test company, and NXP Semiconductors, the independent semiconductor company founded by Philips, have announced the completion of an assembly and test joint venture. Initially announced in February this year, the name of the new company has now been declared ASEN. Located in the Suzhou Industrial Park in Southern China, ASEN is strategically placed to serve the rapidly growing global semiconductor assembly and test market. As a joint venture, ownership is split between ASE (60%) and NXP (40%) and the board is comprised of senior executives from both companies. Initially ASEN will focus on mobile communications; however it is expected to expand into other segments in the future.
Sony and Toyota Industries have announced an agreement to integrate management of their ST liquid crystal display (STLCD) and ST mobile display (STMD) joint ventures, and establish a new company effective 1 December, 2007. STLCD and STMD currently manufacture low-temperature polysilicon thin film transistor LCD panels for mobile products. When the new company is initially established, Sony's share will be 86% and Toyota Industries' 14%. Following its establishment, principal management of the new company will be assigned to Sony and, through a series of share purchase transactions, it will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony by 31 March, 2009.
International Rectifier has agreed to license its patented DirectFET, advanced power management packaging technology, to Infineon Technologies. Designed for use in AC-DC and DC-DC power conversion applications in computers, notebooks, telecommunications and consumer electronics devices, the DirectFET power package is a surface-mount power MOSFET packaging technology for efficient topside cooling in an SO-8 footprint or smaller. Infineon will deploy the DirectFET power package technology with its OptiMOS 2 and OptiMOS 3 chip technology and expects to sample the OptiMOS 2 in DirectFET packages starting early 2008.
Fairchild Semiconductor says it will keep fighting following a recent setback in its longstanding patent dispute with Power Integrations. A US jury found that four Power Integrations patents asserted in the lawsuit are valid. Fairchild said the verdict finding was incorrect and disappointing, and said it was planning to contest those findings and several other errors the company says have been made during the litigation that began in 2004. Fairchild has already released a new generation of advanced pulse-width modulation (PWM) controllers and related products that replace the products that are accused in the lawsuit. Fairchild is also suing Power Integrations for patent infringement in a separate lawsuit.
Renesas Technology, a global microcontroller supplier, and Quantum Research Group (QRG), a supplier of capacitive touch sensing technology, recently announced that the two companies are collaborating to develop innovative capacitive touch sensing solutions. This agreement gives customers the benefits of QRG's expertise and innovative QProx technology on Renesas' MCU families, backed by their high quality, production capacity and supply chain reliability. With no moving parts and the ability to implement sealed surfaces, capacitive touch sensing makes products more reliable and easier to manufacture than the electro-mechanical controls it replaces, as well as allowing more innovative product designs.
Industry
A jury in San Jose, USA, has indicted two men on charges of conspiracy to commit economic espionage and to steal trade secrets at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and NetLogic Microsystems. The indictment alleges that Lan Lee, an American citizen, and Yuefei Ge, Chinese, formed a company called SICO Microsystems to develop chips based on stolen designs. They then allegedly attempted to get funding for the business from a Chinese military department.
Market research firm iSuppli has lowered its forecast of global semiconductor revenue growth in 2007 from a previous 6% down to 3,5%, saying that a current upturn will not be sufficient to offset sales weakness in the first half of the year, led by DRAM and NAND-type Flash memory. It now expects revenue to increase from the market's 2006 level of $260,6 billion, to $269,9 billion in 2007.
According to a report from market watcher Frost & Sullivan, the market volume for automotive microcontrollers will expand by about 63% between 2006 and 2010. The main factor driving demand is expected to be the proliferation of electronic content in vehicles aiming at reducing human errors as well as the increasing number of safety features such as radars, ultrasonic sensors and multiplexing, with all of them requiring increasing amounts of processing power and intelligence. Other contributing factors are expected to be the rise of hybrid and electric vehicles, increasing car sales especially in Asia and the necessity to continually improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions.
Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2) has announced the formation of the Design-For-Manufacturability Coalition (DFMC), with a founding membership composed of chip makers and EDA vendors including Texas Instruments, Cadence, Samsung, IBM, Sagantec, ST Microelectronics, Freescale Semiconductor and Ponte Solutions, with more members expected to be announced soon. The DFMC will build on previous efforts to ensure that ICs can be manufactured in accordance with the original designs.
Research by Ovum RHK indicates that global sales of optical components in the second quarter of 2007 were $936 million, down 1% from the like quarter last year and down 5% sequentially. This market decline has been attributed to inventory adjustments by component customers and is expected to be temporary.
According to iSuppli, the DRAM industry will outperform the industry's average annual bit shipment growth of 55% to 60% to achieve growth of 94% in 2007. This is due to the rapid manufacturing acceleration by DRAM suppliers in the first half of the year, an occurrence which also caused steep revenue declines, a situation which has since been improved by slowed production growth.
According to Frost & Sullivan, the global market for automotive ASICs is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8,2% over the coming years. This growth can be achieved with no small help from the Asian market's revenue contributions. The report reveals that the automotive ASIC market was worth $2,99 billion in 2006, and the projected growth would see it reach about $3,24 billion in 2007, $3,50 billion in 2008 and $4,10 billion in 2010. The Asian region is exhibiting the fastest growth rates, while the European region is set to generate the most revenues due to early technological acceptance and government regulations.
Technology
Intel is developing technology, known as pre-touch, which allows robotic hands to sense the shape and size of objects without actually touching them. In a demonstration, a robotic arm approaches three plastic bottles, two of which are filled with water, one of which is empty. Without touching the bottles, the sensors at the end of the arm scan each one before the robot knocks the empty one off the table. The technology uses an electrode to generate an electric field which is then sensed by another electrode. This electric field is disturbed by objects in the immediate vicinity and an algorithm resolves this disturbance into information about the physical object.
IBM researchers have demonstrated a new, efficient and precise technique to print at the nanoscale. The method could advance the development of nanoscale biosensors, of lenses that can bend light inside future optical chips, and the fabrication of nanowires that might be the basis of tomorrow's computer chips. The researchers have printed particles as tiny as 60 nanometres with single-particle resolution to create nano-patterns ranging from simple lines to complex arrangements. Translating their resolution into 'dots per inch' (dpi), the nanoprinting method yields 100 000 dots per inch, whereas common offset printing today operates with 1500 dpi.
A new company called Cognitive Code has developed software said to enable machines to carry out conversations with humans, by using algorithms that convert strings of words into concepts and formulating a wordy response. According to the developer, the difference between this technology - known as SYLVIA for symbolically isolated, linguistically variable intelligence algorithm - and existing programs known as 'chatbots' is its ability to contextualise conversations so that specific sequences of words are not required.
Giving them hope of realising their goal of developing a magnesium combustion engine, researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed a new kind of efficient, solar-powered laser. Magnesium is not only abundant, with about 1,3 grams found in every litre of seawater, or about 1800 trillion metric tons in our oceans, it also has an energy storage density about 10 times higher than that of hydrogen. A laser is needed to generate the high temperatures (3726°C) required to recycle the generated magnesium oxide back into magnesium, and with solar energy being renewable, these lasers are technically practical.
Researchers at the University of Washington claim to have discovered that neutrons are in fact not neutral in charge as previously thought, but instead consist of three layers of charge - negative/positive/negative - that combine to zero. The researchers say that the results have been confirmed by data from three separate particle accelerators. The assumption that neutrons are neutral has been accepted pretty much as fact by scientists and engineering students for decades. Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi, in 1947 postulated that neutrons were actually composed of subatomic layers of charge that cancel to zero, but lack of the technology to prove the theory meant that his theory was to a large extent ignored.
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