South Africa
Tellumat Electronic Manufacturing has acquired the assets of Atlantis-based television factory Tedelex Manufacturing from listed group Amalgamated Appliances (AMAP) for an undisclosed sum. Tellumat will operate the assets from the existing facility in Atlantis. Tedelex manufactured TV sets for top global brand Sony as well as AMAP’s own brands. Tellumat has secured Sony as a key customer for the facility and says it will aggressively pursue new business to grow the operation and uplift the Atlantis community by creating more jobs.
Overseas
Business
Avago Technologies has reported financial results for its second quarter of fiscal year 2010, ended 2 May. Net revenue was $515 million, an increase of 13% compared with the previous quarter, and up 58% from the same quarter last year. Net income was $90 million, or $0,37 per diluted share. This compares with net income of $38 million, or $0,16 per diluted share last quarter, and a net loss of $31 million, or $0,14 per diluted share in the same quarter last year.
EXFO reported record sales for its third quarter ended 31 May 2010. Sales increased 44,9% to $63,2 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2010 from $43,6 million in the third quarter of 2009 and 16,8% from $54,1 million in the second quarter of 2010. NetHawk, which was acquired in mid-March, contributed $6,0 million to EXFO’s revenues in the third quarter of 2010. After three quarters into fiscal 2010, sales increased 19,4% to $162,9 million from $136,4 million for the same period in 2009. GAAP net earnings in the third quarter of fiscal 2010 totalled $0,2 million, or $0,00 per diluted share, compared to a net loss of $23,3 million, or $0,39 per share, in the same period last year and net earnings of $1,2 million, or $0,02 per diluted share, in the second quarter of fiscal 2010.
For its third quarter of fiscal 2010, which ended 3 June 2010, Micron Technology had net income attributable to shareholders of $939 million, or $0,92 per diluted share, on net sales of $2,29 billion. The results for the third quarter compare to net income of $365 million, or $0,39 per diluted share, on net sales of $1,96 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2010 and a net loss of $301 million, or $0,37 per diluted share, on net sales of $1,11 billion for the third quarter of fiscal 2009.
A French startup called McPhy Energy, specialising in hydrogen fuel cell technology, has received funding worth 13,7 million Euros from several investors. The funds will be used towards the global expansion of the company and the further industrialisation and commercialisation of its innovative technology for the solid storage of hydrogen in the form of magnesium hydride. The company has developed an alternative solution for the on-site production of hydrogen for the industry sector and for the renewable energy sector a concrete solution to solve the issue of energy storage.
Companies
National Semiconductor has acquired the technology of GTronix, a fabless semiconductor company specialising in programmable and adaptive analog sensory processing technology. GTronix’s solutions enhance audio user interface and voice processing and are well suited for applications where small form factor, low power, low latency and undistorted signals are critical. Its proprietary technology provides low-power solutions for noise cancellation in mobile applications such as wireless handsets and audio accessories. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
STC.UNM (STC), the technology-transfer arm of the University of New Mexico, is charging Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Samsung Electronics with patent infringement of an invention that improves the capability of semiconductor manufacturers to fabricate next-generation chips. Last year, STC filed a complaint against Toshiba, which STC dismissed once Toshiba became a licensee under the STC patents. The STC patent pertains to lithographic methods that allow for the manufacture of smaller features in semiconductor devices.
Atmel has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its smartcard (SMS) business to INSIDE Contactless. Pursuant to the definitive agreement, INSIDE will pay $37 million in cash at the closing, subject to a post-closing working capital adjustment and an additional cash consideration of up to $21 million if certain earnout targets are met in 2010 and 2011. As part of the transaction, Atmel has agreed to make a minority investment in INSIDE of approximately $4 million. The agreement also provides INSIDE a royalty-based licence to certain business-related intellectual property in order to support the current SMS business and future product development.
Elpida Memory, Powertech Technology and United Microelectronics Corporation have announced their entry into a 3-way cooperation to advance 3D IC integration technologies for advanced processes including 28 nanometer. This collaboration will leverage the strengths of Elpida’s DRAM, PTI’s assembly, and UMC’s foundry logic technologies to develop a total 3D IC Logic+DRAM integration solution. This technology makes use of TSVs (through-silicon vias) to enable a large number of I/O connections between logic and DRAM devices, which can massively increase the data transfer rate and reduce power consumption.
Industry
Global photovoltaic demand continues to soar in 2010 and is currently projected to double over the rate of installations last year, according to Solarbuzz, an international solar energy market research and consulting company. The firm has raised its 2010 market size to 15,2 GW, which compares with a revised 7,5 GW in 2009. Specifically, the last three quarters of 2010 are projected to generate 12,7 GW, driven by strong growth across Europe, but also in the United States, Japan, China and a range of smaller startup markets.
Databeans projects that total general-purpose analog revenue will reach well over $16 billion in 2010. This is a staggering 29% increase from 2009. Backed by the growth of data converters, which is the second fastest growing category in general-purpose analog, the market is projected to have a compound annual growth rate of 11% over the next five years. Data converter revenue is projected to reach just under $3 billion in 2010 – this is a 26% recovery from 2009. Key application growth opportunities for data converters are automotive radar, smart grid data acquisition systems, digital power supplies for network equipment, SDR, PA linearisation and other wireless infrastructure applications. The majority of market share for data converters is held only by a few key players. Texas Instruments, Maxim Integrated Products, Linear Technology, and National Semiconductor control 32% of the data converter market combined. Analog Devices, however, is the top market share winner, controlling 45% of the market. This is no surprise, as 40% of Analog Devices’ total revenue comes from data converters.
In its recently released 2010 touch panel market analysis, DisplaySearch reported that total touch screen module revenue will grow from $4,3 billion in 2009 to nearly $14 billion by 2016, a compound annual growth rate of 18%. Resistive touch is still the leading technology in terms of unit shipments, and currently 90 companies manufacture it. However, projected capacitive technology has attracted numerous suppliers, with 56 companies currently supplying it, nearly twice as many as last year. These two technologies are forecast to represent nearly 98% of touch screen unit share in 2010, and will continue to dominate unit shipments with 82% of unit shipments in 2016. The touch screen industry is extremely diverse, with over a dozen touch screen technologies. About 200 companies are pursuing these technologies and some of them manufacture several different touch technologies.
A flood of electronic products with wireless charging capability is set to arrive on the market in the coming years, causing global shipments of such solutions to soar to 234,9 million units in 2014, up by a factor of 65 from 3,6 million in 2010, according to iSuppli. Of the four current wireless charging technologies in place today, magnetic inductive is the most widely adopted by nodes in the value chain. Based on the principle of electromagnetic induction, in which current generated from the induced magnetic field in the receiver coil is used to charge devices, the technology enjoys wide support from semiconductor vendors, device manufacturers, accessories makers as well as retailers. Other technologies include conductive, near-field magnetic resistance and far-field magnetic resonance.
Seven leading players in the near field communication (NFC) ecosystem – Ericsson, Gemalto, NXP Semiconductors, Oberthur Technologies, STMicroelectronics, Venyon and ViVOtech, have joined forces to form the MIFARE4Mobile Industry Group. The aim of the group is to enable its members to collaborate and work together to standardise and advance the uniform management of MIFARE applications on NFC-enabled secure elements, such as SIM cards and mobile phones. MIFARE has become the most widely adopted contactless technology on the market today and is used in public transportation schemes, ticketing systems and access management around the world. MIFARE4Mobile is a technology which has been developed by NXP and is used to manage MIFARE-based services in NFC mobile devices, from the over-the-air installation to the end-user interaction via the user interface of the mobile phone.
Technology
E Ink has announced the release of its latest electronic paper display technology, Pearl, which will début in Amazon’s next-generation Kindle e-reader. With the whitest reflective displays in the industry, and a contrast ratio claimed 50% greater than competing technologies, E Ink believes that Pearl enables a reading experience most similar to reading text on printed paper. Pearl is completely bistable, requiring no power to hold an image or page of text. Tier one semiconductor providers such as Epson, Freescale, Marvell and Texas Instruments have created display drivers and power management devices that will support the Pearl platform.
Lattice Semiconductor has partnered with Affarii Technologies to demonstrate what the companies claim is the industry’s lowest cost, low power remote radio head (RRH) solution at 1300 mW per antenna. The integration of all RRH processing has been achieved on a single LatticeECP3-150 FPGA. The single-chip solution supports 2x2 MIMO configurations for WCDMA, LTE and WiMAX applications.
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