Cape Town-based Tellumat Electronic Manufacturing was recently recognised for its world-class quality standards at the inaugural DTI ‘South African Quality Awards.’ The company’s focus on manufacturing excellence was recognised by being selected as one of four finalists for the ‘Best Quality Service Award – Large Enterprise.’ According to the DTI, “the purpose of the Quality Awards is to recognise and reward enterprises that have made concerted efforts to improve the quality of South African goods and services, as well as to encourage individuals to invest their time and resources to improve the quality of their products and services.”
For the year ended 28 February 2010, Altech reported revenue of R9,2 billion, operating profit of R933 million (up 7% from last year) and earnings per share of 536 cents. Of its myriad operating companies, the group cited its Altech Netstar, Altech Stream East Africa, Altech Fleetcall and Altech Card Solutions as particularly strong performers.
Becker Manufacturing has been awarded ISO 9001:2008 certification. The scope of supply is for the manufacture of radio frequency amplifiers, couplers, antenna systems for underground communication, vehicle and personnel tags and tag readers, collision avoidance systems and power supplies.
RF Design has been appointed as Arctic Silicon Devices’ (ASD) distributor in South Africa. ASD is a Norwegian, fables semiconductor supplier of front-end ICs such as data converter standard products and application specific standard products.
Overseas
Business
Cree announced record revenue of $234,1 million for its third quarter of fiscal 2010, ended 28 March. This represents a 78% increase compared to revenue of $131,1 million reported for the third fiscal quarter last year and a 17% increase compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2010. GAAP net income for the third quarter increased more than tenfold year-over-year to $44,6 million, or $0,41 per diluted share, compared to net income of $4,0 million, or $0,05 per diluted share, for the third quarter of fiscal 2009. The company foresees further gains in the next quarter, with a revenue target of 255 million to $265 million.
Announcing its financial results for the 2010 first quarter ended 27 March, STMicroelectronics reported net revenues of $2,3 billion, which included sales recorded by ST-Ericsson. Net revenues increased in comparison to the year-ago quarter in all market segments and in all regions; however, they decreased 10,0% sequentially, mainly reflecting fewer days in the fiscal first quarter compared to the prior quarter. ACCI (automotive/consumer/computer/ communication infrastructure) and IMS (industrial and multisegment) product segments registered better than seasonal sequential revenues trends while the company’s wireless segment decreased by 17,6%.
Cypress Semiconductor announced that revenue for the 2010 first quarter was $202,3 million, up 4,3% from $194,0 million for the prior quarter, and up 45,2% from $139,3 million for the year-ago period. The company recorded GAAP net income of $12,7 million in the 2010 first quarter, or diluted earnings per share of $0,07. This compares with last quarter’s diluted earnings per share of $0,02 and a diluted net loss per share in the year-ago first quarter of $0,66.
Microsemi reported unaudited results for its second quarter of fiscal year 2010 ended 28 March. Net sales were $118,2 million, up 11,9% from the second quarter of 2009 and up 4,8% from the first quarter of 2010. GAAP net income for the second quarter of 2010 was $11,5 million or $0,14 per diluted share compared to a GAAP net loss of $16,6 million or a loss of $0,20 per diluted share for the second quarter of 2009 and GAAP net income of $8,0 million or $0,10 per diluted share in the first quarter of 2010.
For the first quarter of 2010, ended 3 April, Lattice Semiconductor’s revenue was $70,4 million, an increase of 28% from the $55,1 million reported in the prior quarter, and an increase of 63% from the $43,3 million reported in the same quarter a year ago. FPGA revenue for the first quarter was $23,4 million, an increase of 41% from the $16,6 million reported in the prior quarter, and an increase of 51% from the $15,5 million reported in the same quarter a year ago. PLD revenue for the first quarter was $47,0 million, an increase of 22% from the $38,5 million reported in the prior quarter, and an increase of 69% from the $27,8 million reported in the same quarter a year ago. Net income for the first quarter was $11,1 million ($0,10 per share), compared to $5,6 million ($0,05 per share) in the prior quarter and a net loss of $5,8 million ($0,05 per share) reported in the same quarter a year ago.
Hynix Semiconductor announced the earnings results for its first quarter of 2010, ended 31 March. Consolidated revenues totalled 2,82 trillion won, slightly up from 2,80 trillion won in the previous quarter. The increase was mainly due to a favourable memory market condition and shipment growth of DRAM, as well as average selling price improvement. Quarter-over-quarter, DRAM average selling price and bit shipment climbed by 3% and 6% respectively. NAND Flash average selling price declined by 8% sequentially while bit shipment remained flat.
Fairchild Semiconductor announced sales for the first quarter (ended 28 March) of $378 million, up 7% from the prior quarter and 69% higher than the first quarter of 2009. First quarter net income was $22,6 million or $0,18 per diluted share, compared to net income of $13,1 million or $0,10 per diluted share in the prior quarter and a net loss of $51,1 million or $0,41 per share in the first quarter of 2009. Results for the first quarter of 2010 include $2,4 million in restructuring and impairments and $1,3 million of accelerated depreciation.
Altera recorded first quarter sales of $402,3 million, up 10% from the fourth quarter of 2009 and up 52% from the first quarter of 2009. New product sales increased 29% sequentially. First quarter net income was $153,2 million, or $0,50 per diluted share, compared with net income of $103,0 million, ($0,34 per diluted share) in the fourth quarter of 2009 and $44,0 million, or $0,15 per diluted share, in the first quarter of 2009.
ST-Ericsson reported financial results for its first fiscal quarter ending 27 March. Net sales were $606 million and net loss was $154 million, compared to $740 million net sales and $125 million net loss in the last quarter of 2009. Despite the disappointing results, the company says its restructuring plans are on track and are expected to contribute savings starting in the second half of 2010.
Texas Instruments announced first-quarter revenue of $3,21 billion, net income of $658 million and earnings per share of 52 cents. These figures compare with revenue of $3,01 billion, net income of $655 million and earnings per share of 52 cents in the immediately previous quarter, and revenue of $2,09 billion, net income of $17 million and earnings per share of 1 cent in the first quarter last year.
Companies
Indium has signed a joint marketing and technical support agreement for electronics assembly materials patented and manufactured by Ormet Circuits. This agreement enables Indium to offer a line of high-temperature, lead-free assembly materials that addresses the requirements of many power semiconductor and semiconductor packaging applications.
Fairchild Semiconductor and Infineon Technologies announced a packaging partnership for their power MOSFETs in the MLP 3x3 (Power33 or S3O8) and PowerStage 3x3 packages. The compatibility agreement is in response to the need for supply security while balancing the drive towards high efficiency and thermal performance in DC-DC conversion. It takes advantage of the expertise both companies offer for asymmetric, dual and single MOSFETs for DC-DC applications from 3 A to 20 A.
u-blox has received official AT&T certification for LEON, u-blox’ 2G GSM/GPRS small-outline module. AT&T is America’s largest telecoms service provider and largest GSM and 3G mobile carrier with over 81,6 million wireless customers. LEON is targeted for use in machine-to-machine (M2M) communication devices for a wide variety of applications such as fleet management, Automatic Vehicle Locator (AVL), asset tracking and remote metering.
Industry
The WiMAX 2 Collaboration Initiative was launched recently, with support from WiMAX research organisations, equipment makers and silicon suppliers. Based on the IEEE 802.16m standard, WiMAX 2 is set to raise peak data rates to 300 Mbps, as well as lowering latency and increasing VoIP capacity, while maintaining backward compatibility.
Findings from a recent Databeans report show recovery in worldwide microcontroller revenue, with the market expected to reach $12,3 billion dollars this year, up 14% from 2009. MCUs, a relatively consistent components market for generating revenue, suffered a 21% loss in revenue in 2009, due in large part to the struggling economy. However, with their wide variety of uses, including automotive, computer, consumer, communications and industrial, MCUs are slated to recover this year and grow steadily to $18.5 billion dollars in 2015.
Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry organisations, Accellera and The SPIRIT Consortium, have completed their merger. The new organisation takes on the Accellera name and will continue to develop electronic design language-based and intellectual property (IP) standards of benefit to the electronics industry. The new organisation is aligned on the path to create formal standards through the IEEE, and currently has eight standardisation subcommittees operating. These standards include: SystemRDL (Register Description Language), IPtagging, Interface Technical Committee (ITC), Open Verification Library (OVL), Unified Coverage Interoperability (UCI), Verilog Analog/Mixed Signal (AMS), Verification IP (VIP) and IP-XACT.
IMS Research’s GPS IC market tracker recently published an optimistic outlook for 2010, after an upsurge in shipments in 2009. The report shows that the cellular market grew 91% year-on-year from 4Q 2008 to 4Q 2009, while the PND market previously feel 41% between 1Q 2008 and 1Q 2009 but has seen a resurgence in shipments in 4Q 2009. The market for in-car GPS solutions has fallen slowly and consistently from a market high in 2Q 2008, but shipments in notebooks have more than doubled between 4Q 2008 and 4Q 2009. GPS enabled digital cameras are becoming a larger feature for the digital camera market. Total shipments for 2009 across all markets analysed capped 300 million ICs. Since 2007 the total GPS IC market has grown 105%, with the cellular GPS IC market more than doubling over the period.
Technology
Samsung Electronics announced the industry’s first production of 20 nm NAND chips for use in secure digital (SD) memory cards and embedded memory solutions, thereby leapfrogging the efforts of Intel’s and Micron’s joint venture IMFlash. Based on this cutting-edge technology, the introduction of 32 gigabit (Gb) MLC NAND will expand the company’s memory card solutions for smartphones, high-end IT applications and high-performance memory cards. The write performance of a 20 nm-class-based, eight gigabyte (GB) and higher density SD card is 30% faster than the 30 nm-class NAND and it delivers a speed-class rating of 10 (read speed of 20 MBps, write speed of 10 MBps).
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