South Africa
As part of PEM Technologies’ continued investment in the future of electronics in South Africa, the company recently sponsored the University Of Kwazulu Natal’s School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering’s prize giving, which was held at The Howard College Campus at the end of last year. Pictured is Steve Eglinton, managing director of PEM, handing a prize to Adam Paardenkooper for his final year electronic engineering project.
Cobar Europe recently recognised its top sales team and sales individual performers for their exemplary achievements during 2008. Sales Team of the Year 2008 was awarded to PEM Technologies, the manufacturer’s representatives for the territory of South Africa. In presenting the award, Stan Renals, managing director CEO of the Cobar Group, said, “We are pleased to recognise and honour PEM Technologies for their outstanding teamwork in promoting Cobar products in their market. Their approach as a team, as well as their individual salesmanship, is increasing market penetration for Cobar products in South Africa.” PEM became Cobar Europe’s SA representative in November 2007.
Overseas
Business
ON Semiconductor announced that it is taking additional cost reduction measures. In addition to measures taken in 2008 such as temporary site shutdowns and elimination of bonus payments, the company now plans in 2009 to close factories ahead of schedule, enforce mandatory unpaid leave for senior executives and shortened work weeks for other staff, as well as to reduce its worldwide personnel by approximately 1500 which equates to roughly 10% of total payroll expenses.
Hamamatsu Photonics has announced the expansion of its electron tube division facility in Iwata City, Japan. The new building will be 15 447 square metres and will house 200 R&D and production personnel for scintillators, spot light sources, xenon lamps and other light sources, deuterium lamps and the novel Stealth Dicing technology. Completion of the new facility is expected in January 2010, with initial production scheduled for February.
Freescale will be cutting 10% of its workforce, or roughly 2400 jobs, over the course of 2009, in addition to cutting executive salaries, mandatory unpaid leave for workers, and freezing of company contributions to employees’ retirement funds. This follows, and is in addition to, last October’s announcement of a 10% headcount reduction.
Motorola has announced further cost reduction actions, primarily associated with the company’s mobile devices business. Motorola will further reduce its workforce in 2009 by approximately 4000 positions. This will include approximately 3000 positions associated with the mobile devices business and approximately 1000 positions associated with corporate functions and other business units. This follows the more than 13 000 jobs that Motorola slashed during 2008.
International Rectifier (IR) has sued Alex Lidow, former CEO of the company and son of founder Eric Lidow. The court case alleges that Alex Lidow stole intellectual property related to gallium nitride devices from the company. Lidow has now been linked to the CEO position of Efficient Power Conversion. He resigned from IR in October 2007 after accounting irregularities were discovered.
Xilinx announced net revenues of $458,4 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2009, down 5% sequentially from the prior quarter and down 3% compared to the same quarter a year ago. Third quarter net income was $139,4 million, or $0,51 per diluted share, including an $89,7 million pre-tax gain on the early extinguishment of convertible debentures and a $19,5 million pre-tax impairment charge on investments. Collectively, these income and expense items represented approximately $0,19 per diluted share after tax.
Linear Technology reported financial results for the quarter ended 28 December 2008. Revenue of $249,2 million for the second quarter of fiscal year 2009 decreased 20% compared to the previous quarter’s revenue of $310,4 million and decreased 14% or $39,5 million from $288,7 million reported in the second quarter of fiscal year 2008. Diluted earnings per share of $0,38 decreased $0,10 per share or 21% from the first quarter of fiscal year 2009 and decreased $0,03 per share or 7% from the second quarter of fiscal year 2008. Net income of $84,2 million decreased $23,4 million or 21,8% from the first quarter of fiscal year 2009 and decreased $9,6 million or 10,2% from the second quarter of fiscal 2008.
Avago Technologies will reduce its number of employees by approximately 230, or about 6% of total headcount. Accordingly, the company expects to record charges, which will be primarily cash charges, of approximately $6 million to $8 million. The majority of the charges will be reflected in the financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2009. The company recently reported net income of $18 million, compared to $44 million in the previous quarter.
Due to current global economic conditions, Ixys has announced that it will reduce its number of personnel, reduce salaries by 10% for many employees and reduce fees paid to its board of directors by a similar margin. To conserve cash, the board of directors also suspended the company’s cash dividend indefinitely. The company’s previously announced stock repurchase programme remains in effect. Ixys expects its net revenues for the quarter ended 31 December 2008 to be in the range of $56 to $58 million when all accounting adjustments are completed.
Companies
Intersil has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Zilker Labs, a privately-held, fabless semiconductor company with technology interests in high-efficiency digital power ICs. This acquisition is the third announced by Intersil over the past five months. The boards of directors of both companies have approved the merger, which adds approximately $1,5 million of additional operating expenses per quarter and is expected to become accretive by 2010. Intersil may record a one-time charge to operating income for purchased in-process research and development expenses when the closing occurs. The amount of that charge, if any, has not yet been determined.
Maxim has won a contract to define and develop a next-generation, powerline-communication (PLC) specification and solution for French power utility Electricite Reseau Distribution France. In partnership with Sagem Communications, Maxim will deliver an open PLC specification that facilitates the implementation of an automatic meter-management (AMM) infrastructure in France. The successful completion of this project is expected to result in the replacement of more than 35 million meters and concentrators in France.
NOR Flash maker, Spansion, has engaged the services of Barclays Capital to find a buyer for itself, or another company willing to merge with it. In anticipation of this process, Spansion decided to delay making the interest payment on its outstanding 11,25% senior notes due 2016, which was due 15 January 2009.
EBV Elektronik and Nuventix have announced a buy-sell distribution agreement in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) whereby EBV will distribute Nuventix’ full line of cooling solutions designed for use with solid-state lighting products, high-performance CPUs, ASICs, FPGAs and microelectronics.
Micrel, a manufacturer of analog, high-bandwidth communications and Ethernet IC solutions, and Cyan, a supplier of embedded processor solutions for networking and industrial control/communications, announced that they are working together on a technology partnership. The collaboration involves developing subsystem level module products targeted at automated meter reading infrastructure, public lighting management, Ethernet gateways and RF sensor network markets. Micrel is expected to provide the RF chips with Cyan supplying the microcontrollers and system software.
A US district court has ruled against Rambus in a patent dispute with Micron Technology. The court decided that 12 patents that Rambus asserted against Micron were unenforceable, based on the fact that Rambus’ “spoliation conduct was extensive, including within its scope the destruction of innumerable documents relating to all aspects of Rambus’ business.”
Industry
Worldwide sales of semiconductors declined in November 2008 to $20,8 billion, a decline of 9,8% from November 2007 when sales were $23,1 billion, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) has reported. Sales were 7,2% lower than the $22,4 billion in October 2008. Excluding memory products from the calculation shows a slower year-on-year decline of 4,8% to $17,3 billion from $18,2 billion. Sales for the first 11 months of 2008 were $232,7 billion, an increase of 0,2% from the first 11 months of 2007 when sales were $232,2 billion. Excluding memory products, year-to-date industry sales increased 5,6%.
The European Commission (EC) has confirmed that officials recently carried out unannounced inspections at the premises of several smartcard chips producers in several member states. These chips are used for the production of smartcards, such as telephone SIM cards, bank cards and identity cards. The commission has reason to believe that the companies concerned may have violated EC treaty rules prohibiting practices such as price fixing, customer allocation and the exchange of commercially sensitive information. Surprise inspections are a preliminary step in investigations into suspected cartels. Although the EC did not detail which companies were raided, there have been reports stating that Infineon, NXP and STMicroelectronics were among them.
Despite the economic outlook for most semiconductor manufacturers worsening by the day, according to IMS Research, the GPS market is forecast to increase by over $200 million between 2008 and 2009. In 2009 GPS will begin to penetrate into a range of vertical markets, such as cameras, laptops, UMPCs, sporting equipment and first responder radios. This will help to drive shipment growth of over 25% year-on-year. Geographic location is emerging as a key component of future offerings from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Nokia, Intel, Mozilla and Ericsson. Looking beyond the current economic turbulence, IMS Research is forecasting the overall market for GPS to demonstrate a 21,2% compound annual growth rate between 2008 and 2013.
The EDA Consortium (EDAC) announced that electronic design automation (EDA) industry revenue for Q3 2008 declined 10,9% to $1258,6 million compared to $1412,1 million in Q3 2007. The four-quarter moving average declined 2,8%. Companies that were tracked employed 28 176 professionals in Q3 2008, up 3,4% from the 27 254 employed in Q3 2007, and 6% over the 28 004 employed in Q2 2008. However, if current indicators are anything to go by, job cuts in the industry are surely imminent.
According to iSuppli, global DRAM revenue fell by a massive 19,8% in 2008 to $25,2 billion, down from $31,5 billion in 2007. This marks a second year of decline following the 7% drop in 2007. Adding to its woes, the troubled DRAM market is expected to suffer another revenue decline of 4% in 2009 due to global economic uncertainty. According to the researcher, the top eight DRAM suppliers have lost nearly $8 billion since 2007, and their total operating loss is expected to amount to $11 billion by the end of next year.
Technology
According to a Frost & Sullivan Technical Insights report, researchers at the Singapore-based Nanyang Technology University (NTU) have developed an innovative antenna-in-package (AiP) solution for single-chip 60 GHz radio chipsets. The physical structure of the device integrates the compact radio chipset with a highly developed set of antennas that uses complex radio electronics. The solution essentially employs a low-temperature cofired ceramic technology which enables the solution to operate efficiently within the unlicensed frequency band of the spectrum. It is anticipated that the solution can potentially cater to a large number of emerging wireless communication products employing 60 GHz radio chipsets. The functionality of the solution can be extended to a wide gamut of commercial products such as mobile phones, desktops and even data transfer devices.
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