Overseas
Business
Cypress Semiconductor announced that revenue for the 2009 second quarter was $155,8 million, up 12% from $139,3 million for the prior quarter, and down 26% from $209,6 million for the year-ago period (excluding SunPower). The company recorded a GAAP net loss of $45,3 million in the 2009 second quarter, or a diluted net loss per share of $0,32. This compares with last quarter’s diluted net loss per share of $0,66 and diluted earnings per share in the year-ago second quarter of $0,10.
Altera announced second quarter sales of $279,2 million, up 6% from the first quarter of 2009 and down 22% from the second quarter of 2008. New products grew 16% sequentially. Second quarter net income was $47,4 million, $0,16 per diluted share, up from net income of $44,0 million, $0,15 per diluted share, in the first quarter of 2009 and down from $98,0 million, $0,32 per diluted share, in the second quarter of 2008.
Advanced Analogic Technologies recently reported financial results for the first quarter ended 31 March 2009. Net revenue was $16,5 million, a decrease of 34% over net revenue of $25,1 million for the first quarter of 2008 and a sequential decrease of 11% from net revenue of $18,6 million for the fourth quarter of 2008. Net loss for the first quarter of 2009 was $5,2 million, or $0,12 per diluted share. This compares to net income of $0,4 million, or $0,01 per diluted share for the first quarter of 2008, and net loss of $14,4 million, or $0,32 per diluted share for the fourth quarter of 2008.
For its second quarter of fiscal 2009, Avago recorded revenue of $325 million, a decline of 11,7% when compared with the previous quarter, and down 20,9% from the same quarter last year. Gross margin was $98 million, or 30,2% of sales. Second quarter gross margin compares with a gross margin of $143 million, or 38,9% percent last quarter. Net loss was $31 million, compared with net income of $6 million last quarter.
For AVX’s fourth quarter ended 31 March 2009, net sales were $271,8 million. GAAP net loss for the quarter was $1,8 million, or $0,01 per diluted share as a result of restructuring and other charges. For the full fiscal year, net sales were $1389,6 million, while GAAP net income (including special charges and gains) was $80,8 million, or $0,47 per diluted share.
Cree announced revenue of $131,1 million for its third quarter of fiscal 2009, ended 29 March. This represents a 5% increase compared to revenue of $125,0 million reported for the third fiscal quarter last year and an 11% decrease compared to the fiscal second quarter of 2009. GAAP net income for the third quarter was $4,0 million, or $0,05 per diluted share, compared to net income of $5,7 million, or $0,06 per diluted share, for the third quarter of fiscal 2008.
Companies
Infineon has agreed to sell its Wireline Communications (WLC) business to an affiliate of US-based investor Golden Gate Capital for 250 million Euros. This transaction means Infineon will focus in future on four segments: automotive (ATV), industrial and multimarket (IMM), chipcard and security (CCS) and wireless solutions (WLS). Infineon’s WLC segment is estimated to have a leading worldwide market share of more than 20%. Employment contracts for approximately 600 WLC employees will be transferred to the new company.
Industry
Databeans has forecast a 2009 semiconductor market decline of 17%, based upon the latest statistical data from the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organisation. Automotive semiconductor revenue is expected to drop by 28% this year, and is not expected to recover to historical levels until 2012. But this segment represents only 7% of the total semiconductor market. The wireless segment, on the other hand, represents about 20% of semiconductor sales, and it has been doing fairly well, considering today’s market challenges. For example, wireless ASSPs are one of the few semiconductor product categories that actually showed positive growth in the first quarter of this year over 2008’s disastrous fourth quarter. Second quarter results continued along a modest climbing trend, which is to be expected given the state of the global economy. Databeans’ semiconductor market revenue prediction for 2009 is $206,5 billion. The current 2010 forecast calls for a market valued at $238,8 billion – a 16% increase over this year.
According to research by market analysis firm Electronics.ca, the current market for optoelectronics worldwide is valued at $16,7 billion, a decrease of 6% from 2008. Unit shipments are expected to increase this year as demand for LEDs and OLEDs drives a shift in share from higher priced image sensors to these energy efficient lamps that are now backlighting televisions, mobile phones and other displays. Emerging application markets are driving growth and include lighting fixtures and OLED displays in the near term. Longer term advancements in optoelectronic technology will be driven by more ‘green’ photonic applications, advances in medical applications, and security. Advances in manufacturing technology for optoelectronics are also expected to benefit other markets such as alternative energy.
Analysis by Semicast shows that ARM maintained its position as the leading architecture for embedded processors in digital home applications in 2008, ahead of MIPS and Power Architecture. In its most recent analysis of the market opportunities for ARM in embedded processing, Semicast estimates that cellphones accounted for around 60% of revenues for ARM-based embedded processors in 2008, with other applications making up the remaining 40%. Over the next five years, that ratio is forecast to move closer to 50/50, as ARM expands its presence in markets and applications beyond the phone. Of the suppliers of ARM, MIPS and Power Architecture-based embedded processors to digital home applications in 2008, Broadcom is estimated to have been the market leader, with IBM, NXP, Samsung and Toshiba rounding out the top five, which between them accounted for over 50% of processor revenues.
Osram Opto Semiconductors’ Golden DRAGON Plus LEDs are being used by Guangzhou Zhonglong Communications Technology for the Yangzi River tunnel luminaire project in mainland China. With an internal diameter of 12,7 metres, the tunnel is 8,9 kilometres long in a twin-tunnel complex. A total of 5886 luminaries with over 410 000 LEDs will be installed in the tunnel, which will become the longest in the world to employ LED lighting.
The EDA Consortium announced that the electronic design automation (EDA) industry revenue for Q1 2009 declined 10,7% to $1192,1 million, compared to $1334,2 million in Q1 2008, driven primarily by an accounting shift at one major EDA company. The four-quarter moving average declined 11,3%. Computer aided engineering (CAE), EDA’s largest category, generated revenue of $427,9 million in Q1 2009. This represents an 18,8% decrease over the same period in 2008. The four-quarter moving average for CAE declined 16,8%.
According to market analyst IC Insights, the worldwide IC market is seeing the beginning up an upturn, in that, after the worst two quarters in the history of the IC industry (4Q08 and 1Q09), 2Q09 rebounded by some 16%. Some of the highlights for the quarter included the DRAM market growing over 30%, DRAM average selling price (ASP) increasing 12%, analog IC unit volume shipments increasing over 30%, microcontroller unit volume shipments increasing over 25%, DSP unit volume shipments increasing over 40%, the display driver market increasing 25% and total worldwide IC unit shipments increasing over 20%.
As touch screen functionality becomes more important to the consumer experience, sales of touch screen device components will grow exponentially over the next five years. Databeans projects that total sales of touch screen controllers will reach $987 million in 2009, and will grow an average of 19% annually to build a market worth $2,3 billion by 2014. Revenue will be generated by significantly increased component shipments, with volume growing from over 300 million units shipped today to about 1 billion units shipped by the end of the forecast period. Touch screens are rapidly becoming widespread due to crafty implementation in mobile phones and music players. Ease of use and intuitive interfaces enable consumers to navigate multifunction electronics quickly and efficiently.
Technology
Electronic devices of the future could be smaller, faster, more powerful and consume less energy thanks to a discovery by researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The key to the finding involves a method to measure intrinsic conducting properties of ferroelectric materials, which for decades have held tremendous promise but have eluded experimental proof. Now, however, DOE scientists at the Centre for Nanophase Materials Sciences believe they may be on a path that will see barriers tumble. The authors have demonstrated for the first time a giant intrinsic electroresistance in conventional ferroelectric films, where flipping of the spontaneous polarisation increased conductance by up to 50 000%. Ferroelectric materials can retain their electrostatic polarisation and are used for piezoactuators, memory devices and RFID (radio-frequency identification) cards.
Researchers from Yale University in the US have proven the existence of a ‘repulsive’ light force. The existence of attractive and repulsive light forces was theorised as recently as 2005. The research team had previously discovered an attractive force, and believes that this new discovery could open the door to the possibility of using light, instead of electricity, to control components on silicon microchips. Distinct from the already established force created by light’s radiation pressure, which pushes against an object as light shines on it, these attractive and repulsive forces push out or pull in sideways from the direction the light travels. The method that the team employed was to split a beam of infrared light into two separate beams and force each one to travel a different length of silicon nanowire, called a waveguide. By creating two light beams that are out of phase with one another, the resulting repulsive force has an intensity that can be controlled by the extent of the phase difference between them.
India is reportedly planning to develop a microprocessor (MPU) as an alternative to using commercial versions in its telecommunications, military and space systems. The country’s government is investing an initial $200 million in Zerone, the company which is set to develop the ‘India microprocessor’, because it sees the use of commercial MPUs as a potential security threat. The project will be managed by the federal Department of Information Technology, and will take advantage of the expertise of engineers from various Indian research and technical institutes. Sun Microsystems’ OpenSparc processor design technology is apparently the leading candidate as the technology to be adopted for the project, along with the Linux operating system and MySQL open-source database software.
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