Africa
A consortium comprising the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the University of Cape Town and Durban-based Internet service provider East Coast Access, has received a three-year, R14,5 million investment by the Innovation Fund of the Department of Science and Technology. The parties will join forces to develop a commercial-grade Internet video broadcasting platform with integrated advertising for low bandwidth network infrastructure environments, as found in developing countries. The aim of the investment is to see the product through from research to market implementation of commercial applications, such as entertainment content with video advertisements.
Opti-Num Solutions has completed an internal BBBEE scorecard, under the Qualifying Small Enterprises framework introduced on 9 February 2007. Under that framework, the company has achieved a score of 67,35 points for the period ending 31 December 2007. This makes it a Level 4 contributor (100% of spend) to any of its customers' procurement spends.
APC has appointed UPS repair and maintenance company, Electrilabs as a Certified Gold Partner. Established in 1999, Electrilabs has seen significant growth since inception, developing into the area of the supplying of turnkey computer-room, UPS and generator solutions for small to large businesses and data centre environments. The company has qualified field service and workshop engineers based in Midrand, and a number of strategic and BEE partners throughout South Africa.
Ericsson has signed an agreement with Lacell SU Burundi to supply a complete turnkey GSM network for the Burundian operator. The agreement includes establishing the core network and its associated radio network, together with all related installation, integration and training services. This first phase of the project is expected to be completed within four months and rollout has already begun.
Wavetrend Technologies was selected as the exclusive technology sponsor of an active RFID delegate registration and monitoring system for Govtech 2008, held at the end of July. Hosted by SITA (State Information Technology Agency), Govtech is one of South Africa's premier government technology events. Each delegate was issued an active RFID 'personnel tag' encrypted with unique and customised identification data. RFID readers were then strategically positioned throughout the conference facility to chronicle delegate movement and activity, in order to assess the attendance of the various presentations and monitor the duration of time each delegate spent in each location.
Overseas
Business
IBM announced second-quarter 2008 diluted earnings of $1,98 per share from continuing operations, an increase of 28% compared with diluted earnings of $1,55 per share in the second quarter of 2007. Second-quarter income from continuing operations was $2,8 billion, an increase of 22%, compared with $2,3 billion in the second quarter of 2007. Total revenues for the most recent quarter of $26,8 billion increased 13% (6%, adjusting for currency) from the second quarter of 2007.
Highlights for Freescale's second financial quarter of 2008 include net sales of $1,47 billion, compared to $1,41 billion in the first quarter of 2008 and $1,38 billion in the second quarter of 2007. Adjusted EBITDA was $416 million for the second quarter of 2008 and $1,63 billion for the latest 12 months ended 27 June 2008. Sales for all product groups - microcontrollers; RF, analog and sensors; networking and multimedia; and cellular - were up from the previous quarter, while sales of 'other' products were down from $101 million to $83 million.
Linear Technology reported financial results for the quarter and year ended 29 June 2008. Revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2008 increased 3,1% to a quarterly record of $307,1 million compared to the previous quarter's revenue of $297,9 million and increased 14,5% or $39,0 million over $268,1 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2007. Diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $0,46 increased $0,02 per share or 4,5% over the third quarter of fiscal year 2008 and increased $0,10 per share or 28% over the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2007. Revenue for the financial year was $1,175 billion, an increase of 8,5% or $92,1 million over revenue of $1,083 billion for the previous fiscal year. Diluted EPS for the year was $1,71, an increase of 23,0% or $0,32 per share over fiscal year 2007 diluted EPS of $1,39.
Digi International reported revenue of $47,0 million for the third fiscal quarter of 2008, compared with $43,5 million for the third fiscal quarter of 2007, an increase of $3,5 million, or 8,0%. Sarian Systems was acquired on 28 April 2008; revenue from Sarian-branded products was $2,4 million for the latest quarter from date of acquisition. Net income and net income per diluted share were $2,0 million and $0,08, respectively, on a GAAP basis, and $3,9 million and $0,15 on a non-GAAP basis.
For the third quarter of the 2008 fiscal year, Infineon reported revenues of 1029 million Euros. EBIT was 71 million Euros, compared to 36 million Euros in the prior quarter. EBIT included a net gain of 41 million Euros in the third quarter, mainly in connection with the sale of its hard disk drive business, and net charges of 8 million Euros in the second quarter. For the third quarter, net income from continuing operations was 45 million Euros or 0,06 Euros per share (basic and diluted).
RF Micro Devices has reported financial results for its fiscal 2009 first quarter ended 28 June 2008. Quarterly revenue increased approximately 13,7% year-over-year and approximately 9,0% sequentially to $240,5 million. Operating loss was approximately $39,7 million on a GAAP basis, reflecting charges related to the strategic restructuring announced on 6 May 2008. Non-GAAP operating income was approximately $2,3 million. Sales of cellular front ends increased 10%, or approximately three times the industry's growth rate in the June quarter.
Companies
ON Semiconductor has signed a definitive merger agreement for the acquisition of Catalyst Semiconductor in an all-stock transaction in which Catalyst shareholders will receive 0,706 shares of ON Semiconductor common stock for each share of Catalyst common stock they own. This represents an equity value of approximately $115 million and an enterprise value of approximately $85 million. Catalyst's analog and mixed-signal business represented more than $11 million in sales as of its April 2008 fiscal year end - a business that grew more than 90% versus the prior year.
CEVA, a leading licensor of silicon intellectual property (SIP) DSP cores and platform solutions for mobile handsets, consumer electronics and storage applications, announced that it will receive $2,5 million from u-blox pursuant to an agreement between the parties to resolve a licence dispute post a royalty audit after a preliminary court hearing conducted by the Court of Commerce of the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland. CEVA will receive the payment for the claimed underreporting, underpayment and/or unauthorised third party use of the technology rights licensed to u-blox.
EBV Elektronik has launched the EBV footprint calculator on www.ebv.com. With it, users can calculate their own annual greenhouse gas emissions (their ecological footprint) by entering details of their household and travel activities. The footprint calculator is a further component to its recently launched 'ECOmise it' campaign, which will provide professional support to customers, suppliers, business partners and employees in light of rising climate change issues.
Digi International announced the acquisition of Spectrum Design Solutions, a privately held Minneapolis-based corporation and a wireless design services organisation. The acquisition is a cash merger, with $4,0 million payable at the acquisition date and $3,0 million to be paid at each of the eighteenth and 36 months following acquisition. Digi anticipates that Spectrum will contribute approximately $0,6 million in revenue for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2008, from date of acquisition, and in a range of approximately $5,0 to $5,5 million in revenue for fiscal year 2009.
Actel has acquired Pigeon Point Systems, a privately-held supplier of telecommunications computing architecture (TCA) management components. With this acquisition, Actel now offers a comprehensive solution for proprietary and standards-based system management implementations in the industrial, military, telecommunications and medical markets. The acquisition is not expected to have a material effect on Actel's financial condition or results of operations. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Industry
The Multicore Association has announced the formation of the Multicore Programming Practices (MPP) working group. The goal of the working group, which will be co-chaired by David Stewart, CEO of CriticalBlue and Max Domeika, senior staff software engineer at Intel, is to develop a multicore software programming guide for the industry that will aid in improving consistency and understanding of multicore programming issues. Initially the group will consider best practices leveraging the C/C++ language to generate a guide of genuine value to engineers who are approaching multicore programming.
Recently published research by Venture Development Corporation (VDC) indicates that embedded systems manufacturers and their suppliers are driving Windows Embedded revenue by incorporating Microsoft's Classic OSs under embedded restricted licences in device development. While the scope of the research report covers Microsoft's Embedded and Mobile segments, VDC estimates that greater than 40% of Windows Embedded revenue in 2007 was derived from Classic OS (Windows Embedded Enterprise) production licences. The types of applications can range from retail automation, industrial automation, large complex medical devices and others.
Sony, Canon, Eastman Kodak, Hitachi, Victor Company of Japan, KDDI, Kenwood, Matsushita Electric, Nikon, Olympus Imaging, Pioneer, Samsung, Seiko Epson, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba have announced an agreement to form a consortium to develop specifications for interconnecting products using TransferJet, a new inter-operable wireless transfer technology that enables rapid transfer of high resolution video, music and images. TransferJet enables a high speed data transmission rate of 560 Mbps, while eliminating the need for complex setup and operation. Directly touching two compliant electronic products together allows files to be transferred automatically, without the need for an access point.
The SOI Industry Consortium announced that Nvidia has joined the organisation. The consortium, which was formed in October 2007 by a group of leading companies from across the electronics industry, is aimed at accelerating silicon-on-insulator (SOI) innovation into broad markets by promoting the benefits of SOI technology and reducing the barriers to adoption. This now brings membership to 23 companies.
The Femto Forum, the independent industry and operator association that supports femtocell deployment worldwide, today announces that its members have agreed to implement the Broadband Forum's TR-069 'CPE WAN Management Protocol', a worldwide standard for realtime management of customer premises equipment (CPE), as the basis for the management protocol for femtocells. Following its definition in 2004, approximately 30 million devices now use this standard, making it robust and well-proven, with full interoperability.
A new report from Strategy Analytics predicts that regulatory compliance will help to drive the mobile M2M market to from under $16 billion in 2008 to over $57 billion by 2014. The market research firm has identified five key barriers to scaling the global M2M market, and analyses the positions and evolution of key industry stakeholders, as the M2M market broadens across major application groups, including. These barriers are the lack of a low cost local access media that can be implemented on a global basis; the fragmented nature of both the technology vendors and the solutions they provide; lack of any single killer application that can consolidate the market and drive demand forward; the complex nature of M2M solutions increases associated development and integration costs; and management's inability to express the benefits of M2M in anything other than cost savings, rather than exploiting and encouraging the service enablement capacity of mobile M2M.
Broad interest and investment in an array of biometrics technologies around the world will drive spending to $7,3 billion by 2013, up from around $3 billion in 2008, according to a study by ABI Research. Growth will be driven by increased emphasis on security in both the public and private sectors, but it will be underpinned by a raft of technology standards that have enabled more inter-operable systems to emerge. Face, iris, hand and speech recognition systems have emerged and are being adopted independently and alongside fingerprints, which will continue to be the dominant biometric measurement for some time to come.
Technology
A US company called Reactrix is partnering with Samsung to develop digital displays - specifically targeted at billboard advertising - that can detect a person's movement from up to 5 metres away. The technology allows users to play games and navigate menus and maps using hand gestures, similarly to a Nintendo Wii gaming console. The system uses a stereoscopic camera and an infrared light to detect a person's body, and then employs advanced computer vision algorithms to determine the person's movements.
By claiming to improve all the technologies involved in the manufacture of LEDs, Osram development engineers have boasted achieving new records for the brightness and efficiency of white LEDs in the laboratory. Under standard conditions with an operating current of 350 mA, brightness peaked at a value of 155 lm, and efficacy at 136 lm/W. White prototype LEDs with 1 mm² chips were used. The light produced had a colour temperature of 5000 K, with colour coordinates at 0,349/0,393 (cx/cy). Potential applications include general illumination, the automotive sector and any applications that call for large high-power LEDs.
GeoEye, a commercial US satellite company, on 22 August is launching a new Earth-orbiting satellite which is capable of producing colour images with such precise detail that it can distinguish objects measuring just 0,17 m². The US government is restricting the satellite's highest resolution images for military and intelligence use, while scaled down versions (0,5 metre resolution) will be available for commercial and research purposes - still good enough to spot a person on the ground (see accompanying image). The satellite, GeoEye-1, employs devices which can track its exact location relative to the stars - a technology which only recently became available for non-military use. Plans are already underway for GeoEye-2, which will be able to image objects down to 0,06 m², and is planned to launch by 2012.
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