South Africa
The JSE has welcomed Poynting Antennas to the Alternative Exchange (AltX). Approximately 50% of the company's revenue is generated from commercial exports. A portion of the exports are to the international defence industry as Poynting's antennas can also be used to find direction, locate soldiers, locate military vehicles and other military devices. Poynting's customer base includes MTN, Vodacom, iBurst, Armscor, Matrix and Tracker, to name but a few household names. The company's management team says it is not deterred by the current market conditions which have stalled the listing of several companies this year.
SwissQual, the independent Swiss network quality measurement company, has appointed Concilium Technologies as a reseller for Sub Saharan Africa. The agreement covers SwissQual's range of solutions for quality-of-service benchmarking, optimisation and service monitoring. This provides solutions for a range of network technologies including 2G, 3G, HSDPA, HSUPA and WiMAX.
Overseas
Business
Texas Instruments has launched a new Power Management strategic business unit. The new organisation is part of TI's analog business strategy to better focus on solving customers' analog, power management and energy efficiency design challenges. Several semiconductor industry analyst firms, such as iSuppli and Databeans, rank TI as the top worldwide supplier of power management integrated circuits in the industry with approximately 15% market share. Databeans forecasts that the power management industry will continue to increase in importance, with a compound annual growth rate of approximately 15% over the next five years.
Companies
Avnet announced that its offer for Horizon Technology Group (Horizon) has been declared unconditional in all respects. As had been previously announced, all shareholders of Horizon will receive 1,18 Euros per share, which equates to an equity value of approximately 98,5 million Euros. Horizon is a leading technical integrator and distributor of information technology products in the UK and Ireland. The transaction is expected to be accretive to earnings by approximately $0,10 per share in the 2009 financial year, excluding integration charges.
Siltronic Samsung Wafer, a joint venture of Samsung Electronics and Siltronic, have commissioned a new fabrication plant in Singapore for the production of 300 mm wafers. After only 18 months of construction, the companies now own one of the world's largest and most advanced factories for 300 mm wafers. By 2010, the joint venture should reach a monthly capacity of 300 000 wafers and provide over 800 jobs. The overall investment in this project amounts to $1 billion.
NEC Electronics and Elpida have signed a memorandum of understanding to enter into a joint-venture agreement by the end of September 2008, and incorporate a new company by the end of the year. NEC will hold approximately 80% and Elpida will hold approximately 20% of the new company stakes. The new company will engage in the development, design, and sale of display driver ICs. The companies have also agreed in principle that, in addition to manufacturing at NEC, the new joint venture will outsource its production to Elpida's Hiroshima plant. The two firms have not yet worked out the details of the plan.
Diodes Incorporated has completed its acquisition of Zetex in an all cash deal. The two companies had combined revenues of $528 million in 2007. The transaction will close under the previously released terms by which each Zetex shareholder will receive 85,45 pence in cash per Zetex ordinary share, valuing the fully diluted share capital of Zetex at approximately $176 million.
Silicon Laboratories (SL) has signed an agreement to acquire Silicon Valley-based Integration Associates (IA), an innovator in analog-intensive, highly integrated ICs, for net $80 million, taking into consideration IA's cash balances and net current assets. IA brings a diverse portfolio of connectivity, wireless and power solutions, quality revenue and nearly 100 engineers to SL. The acquisition augments SL's R&D investments currently in place in short range wireless, a large market that includes home automation, remote keyless entry and automated meter reading applications.
Kontron and Diamond Systems have entered a strategic partnership under Kontron's ETX Certified Design Partner programme that bundles Kontron's highly scalable ETX computer-on-modules with Diamond Systems' small form factor boards for I/O intensive data acquisition applications. With this agreement, Diamond Systems becomes the 10th global member and the fifth North American member of Kontron's constantly expanding network of ETX partners. The partner programme offers OEMs comprehensive certified carrier board design services for modular embedded computing platforms based on the ETX and COM Express computer-on-module standards.
Avnet announced that it has acquired US company Source Electronics (Source), a provider of outsourced custom programming services for ICs. Source combines deep technical expertise, high quality standards and efficient programming processes to create flexible solutions for a customer base that includes original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), contract manufacturers (EMS) and component manufacturers. From facilities in Brazil, China, Mexico, Singapore and the US, Source supports customers that span a variety of end markets, including consumer electronics, automotive, mobile communications, telecommunications, networking, computing and enterprise storage. Source will be integrated into the services operations of Avnet Logistics, a division of Avnet that delivers logistics and programming services globally.
Cypress Semiconductor and Dainippon Screen Manufacturing (DNS) of Kyoto, Japan announced that DNS has acquired Silicon Light Machines (SLM), a Cypress subsidiary. The acquisition will make SLM a wholly owned subsidiary of DNS. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. DNS is SLM's largest grating light valve (GLV) customer. GLV technology, SLM's flagship product, consists of a series of microscopic ribbons suspended above a silicon substrate that can be precisely tuned to diffract laser light in different ways. The MEMS solution is ideal for computer-to-plate (CTP) commercial printing and other imaging applications.
Industry
The Femto Forum, the independent industry association that supports femtocell deployment worldwide, and the NGMN Alliance, the group focused on the evolution to the next generation of mobile networks, will cooperate on how femtocells can benefit the architecture of next-generation mobile broadband networks such as WiMAX and LTE. The two bodies will work together to ensure that next generation mobile networks can incorporate femtocells from the very beginning of their deployment, rather than integrating the technology afterwards. This is expected to enable mobile operators to use femtocells to manage the cost of rollouts, plan spectrum use and ensure optimum coverage and capacity precisely where it is needed.
Despite signs of an economic slowdown in the wake of the global credit crunch, the latest edition of Semicast's 'Industrial/Medical Semiconductor Service' suggests that revenues for semiconductors in industrial and medical applications will continue to grow in 2008, at around 8%. The market is estimated to have been $20,0 billion in 2007, a rise from around $17,0 billion in 2005, or a jump in revenues of 20% in just two years. Demand is forecast to rise further, to over $33,0 billion in 2013, a CAGR approaching 9%, and to total $183 billion over the period 2007-2013. In 2007, analog ICs and discretes represented the two largest product categories, followed by MCU/MPU/DSP. Over the medium term, highest revenue growth is forecast for analog ICs, reflecting the 'real world' attributes of measurement, control and position that are so common in industrial applications. Next highest growth is forecast for the MCU/MPU/DSP category, as system complexities continue to rise and with it a corresponding need for more complex control.
The credit card-sized nanoETXexpress Computer-on-Module form factor (84 x 55 mm) for developing ultra mobile mini-devices based on x86 processors in 45 nm technology, now has its own dedicated website. The specification and carrier board design guidelines can be downloaded at www.nanoetxexpress.com. The website offers valuable information on, for example, handling more concentrated heat sources, building SMART Battery Management Systems and integrating various displays with standard software when the screens only offer, for example, 800 x 400 pixels.
Worldwide sales of semiconductors of $21,8 billion in May were 7,5% higher than the $20,3 billion reported for May 2007, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). May sales were 2,8% higher than the $21,2 billion reported for April 2008. Year-to-date sales of $103,4 billion are up by 5,3% from the $98,2 billion reported for the first five months of 2007. Total semiconductor sales excluding memory products were up by 12,3% year-on-year and by 2,5% sequentially. SIA noted that May is historically a relatively strong month for semiconductor sales.
Shipments of consumer-oriented 802.11n Wi-Fi access points are expected to see a dramatic increase over the next five years, rising from just 6 million this year to a forecast 88 million in 2013. This rapid growth will not reach full velocity from a standing start, however. According to ABI Research, 802.11n will become the default Wi-Fi technology of choice as equipment vendors include it in their new products. The real market growth will kick in when sufficient numbers of consumers have 802.11n capabilities embedded in their new laptop and desktop computers. The market researcher anticipates the greatest adoption to take place in the 2009-2010 timeframe.
Technology
To address the market need for highly custom semiconductor solutions, Freescale is introducing the first FPGA implementation of the 32-bit V1 ColdFire core on the Altera Cyclone III family of FPGAs. IPextreme, a semiconductor IP licensing specialist, will license the V1 core to Cyclone III customers free of charge. The V1 ColdFire core licence is aimed at providing a flexible, cost-effective solution for engineers whose design challenges cannot be addressed by standard embedded processors and system-on-chip (SOC) devices.
Mean Well has acquired UL458 (Power converters and inverters, and power converter and inverter systems for land vehicles and marine crafts) certification for its F-type model (with GFCI output socket) of TN-1500, TS-1500, and TS-1000 series DC-AC true sine wave inverters.
StatoilHydro - a Norwegian oil and gas company - is building the world's first full scale floating wind turbine, Hywind, in association with Siemens, and will test it over a two-year period offshore Karmoy. The company is investing the equivalent of approximately R617 million. A 2,3 MW wind turbine will be attached to the top of a so-called Spar-buoy, a solution used in production platforms and offshore loading buoys. The rotor blades on the floating wind turbine will have a diameter of 80 metres, and the nacelle will tower some 65 metres above the sea surface. The floatation element will have a draft of some 100 metres below the sea surface, and will be moored to the seabed using three anchor points. The wind turbine can be located in waters with depths ranging from 120 to 700 metres.
Samsung has unveiled a prototype display which uses blue-phase liquid crystals to provide benefits over traditional LCDs. The optical characteristics of these crystals mean that the resulting displays can refresh screen images faster than other LCDs - resulting in reduced blur, and have a wider viewing angle. It also has lower manufacturing requirements, meaning that displays built using this technology could be less costly.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have discovered a new class of superconductor which operates at higher temperatures than other superconducting materials. While the new iron arsenide variant is currently not as efficient as already-developed cuprates (copper-oxygen compounds), its molecular structure provides scientists with more flexibility to tinker with its conductive properties via substitution with foreign elements. Being superconductive at 55 K - compared to up to 138 K for cuprates - the technology is still a long way short of achieving the superconduction holy grail of operating at room temperature.
A new 3D computer mouse from 3Dconnexion allows simplified movement and control within 3D environments such as the popular Second Life environment. The controller has a cap that can be lifted, pressed and turned in order to move through 3D space while simultaneously zooming and rotating the view. An increase in pressure accelerates motion, while a decrease in pressure slows motion for precise micro-adjustments.
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