Southern Africa
Altech reported impressive financial results for the six months ended 31 August 2001 and has entered its sixth consecutive year of solid growth, despite continuing global turmoil and local economic uncertainties. Commenting on the latest results Altech CEO Craig Venter said that the growth was in line with the group's forecasts. "Given the economic climate, I am truly pleased to be in a position to report that Altech's headline earnings per share increased by 24%, which is higher than expected by many investor analysts," he said. "During the same period revenue increased to R1,9 bn with operating income of R150m." Altech's balance sheet remained strong with cash and cash equivalents in excess of R546m and an annualised return on equity of 30,4%. Altech's Wireless Communications Division performed extremely well and exceeded expectations. Netstar, a dominant player in southern Africa's stolen vehicle tracking and recovery market, significantly increased its leadership position during the review period which, in turn, resulted in substantial revenue growth, reported the company. In addition to expansion of its business to Swaziland, Mozambique, Zambia, Namibia and Botswana, Netstar also concluded its first offshore license agreement with Malaysian vehicle manufacturer, Proton. In Altech's Multimedia and Electronics Division, UEC Multi-Media exceeded its forecasted operating profit despite a significant increase in R&D expenditure. Venter said this resulted in several new products being launched. The Alcom two-way radio group had a good first half of the financial year and exceeded its operating profit forecast. Venter said the Arrow Altech Industrial Components Distribution Division had cemented its dominant position in electronic components and had increased its market share over the previous year. At the same time the Computer Products Division had secured the exclusive distribution rights for the entire range of networking products for LG Electronics. Concerning acquisitions, Venter confirmed that Altech was continually looking at such prospects both locally and abroad. In his outlook for the coming months he said Altech would continue to remain as strongly focussed as ever during these times of economic turmoil while, at the same time, positioning itself strongly for future inevitable opportunities.
Leseding Electronics Investments has increased its shareholding in Spescom Telecommunications to 30% in the aggressive second phase of Spescom's empowerment programme. Four years ago Spescom created Leseding Electronics Investments as a business operation to empower the company's previously disadvantaged staff in several ways. Leseding began with a 10% shareholding in Spescom Telecommunications and was established as a channel through which eligible Spescom staff members could participate in the company's growth by owning equity through the Leseding Trust. Spescom said the ultimate goal was not simply to permit staff to obtain shareholding, but to also encourage their active roles in operating Leseding. This would develop their entrepreneurial skills and support Spescom's established staff development and training programmes. Leseding's primary business function is currently the sale and support of Spescom Software's eB products in local markets.
The first African Telecommunications Regulators' Network (ATRN) was formally created in Rabat, Morocco, during the ITU's recently-concluded Forum on Telecommunication Regulation in Africa and in the Arab States, where 21 regulatory agencies participated. Structured as an annual themed conference, ITU said it seeks to intensify cooperation among African countries in matters concerning regulatory issues and to harmonise national regulatory practices. Its mandate is to foster regulatory pre-conditions for developing the African Information Society as well as economic integration on the continent. ITU said this move is part of its strategy to 'strengthen regulators around the globe in a bid to bring a greater range of communications services at affordable prices, to more of the world's people'.
W Gardner & Son has acquired leading SA capacitor manufacturer Afcap from Allied Technologies Limited (Altech). The transaction was effective from 21 September 2001. Altech's decision to sell Afcap is based on a decision by the group to refocus and sell off non-core businesses. W Gardner & Son is a leading manufacturer of toroidal power transformers in South Africa and supplier of lighting control gear and associated products. Afcap said it will continue to operate as a separate entity from their present location in Kya Sand but that the two companies will cooperate in many areas of common interest.
Grintek Telecom has been appointed as sole SA representative for telecommunications test and measurement company, Acterna. The company's product line includes SDH analysers, internetworking analysers, ATM frame relay analysers, data communication test sets and centralised test solutions, as well as high-speed communications and enterprise networking systems, said Grintek Telecom.
ACSC Electronics has been appointed as sole distributor for Panasonic sealed lead acid batteries.
Following the merger of its manufacturing facility with that of its sister company, CHI Control, the Durban branch of local UPS vendor, Meissner, has relocated to Umgeni Business Park. Previously located in Westville, Meissner now shares offices with CHI in a central location. Meissner Durban are now at Umgeni Business Park, 99 Intersite Avenue, Unit 4; tel. (031) 263 0708.
Overseas
Business
Agere Systems has announced it has repaid $1 bn of the $2,5 bn debt it assumed from Lucent Technologies at the time of its spin-off from the telecoms giant, reducing its debt to $1,5 bn. It also said it had reached agreement with its bank group allowing it further flexibility to manage the business through current market conditions.
Sun Microsystems has announced it will cut its workforce by 9%, or around 3900 jobs. Sun said it expects revenues for its first fiscal quarter to be $2,7 bn to $2,9 bn, versus $4,0 bn in the prior fiscal quarter. Scott McNealy, Chairman and CEO of Sun, said that with the computer industry continuing to consolidate and downsize itself and also market uncertainties following the US terrorist attacks, the company was required to take steps to ensure long term health.
Motorola has said it plans to cut a further 7000 jobs, and that it expects to report further losses in the fourth quarter. In an analyst's conference call Motorola said the cuts will come before the end of the year, bringing this year's total layoffs to 39 000, or around 26% of the company's total employees. 4000 of the additional job cuts would come from the sale of businesses, said Motorola. The company has just reported a net loss of $1,4 bn, including $2 bn in charges, on sales of $7,4 bn, for its third quarter. This compares to revenues of $7,5 bn in Q2.
Companies
General Semiconductor has announced an alliance with Analog Integrations of Taiwan. GenSemi will market AIC's existing portfolio of low-dropout regulators, buck/boost regulators, and controllers to its worldwide customer base. In addition, the companies will jointly develop new analog power management products.
TranSwitch, a manufacturer of high-speed connectivity chips, and Samsung Electronics have said they plan to work together to develop next-generation networking products. Under the terms TranSwitch will become Samsung's preferred supplier and partner in the Samsung Network Broadband Division. The companies will collaborate to develop products for next-generation access, metro and core networking platforms.
Tality, a Cadence Design Systems subsidiary, has signed a two-year, multimillion-dollar agreement with Philips Semiconductor. Under the agreement, Tality will design microcontrollers for an array of applications. This includes consumer products, computer peripherals, automotive systems and aerospace designs, said the companies. According to Philips the relationship would allow it to focus more energy on developing new market opportunities, while cutting costs on the chips in its mainstream portfolio.
Fairchild Semiconductor has announced it has begun offering foundry-manufacturing services for electromechanical systems (MEMS), based on technology licensed from the US Sandia National Laboratories. Fairchild has licensed the Sandia Ultra Planar Multilevel MEMS Technology (SUMMiT) IV process technology to develop potential products in telecom and consumer applications.
Thales Acoustics has been selected by Canadian company General Dynamics as the preferred supplier of radio ancillaries for the UK Bowman programme. It says the latest generation of equipment will be used with around 60 000 tactical VHF and HF radios. The company's new Arrowhead range was specifically developed to address UK requirements, said the company. The Arrowhead family is a range of modular, low-volume, lightweight and robust audio ancillaries that includes headsets, handsets and associated items for use with handheld, manpack and vehicle-borne radios. Thales Acoustics has a longstanding working relationship with General Dynamics, having supplied headsets to the Canadian Army for use throughout the IRIS programme.
Industry
The UK Engineering Employers' Federation (EEF) has urged the Chancellor to bring forward measures in his pre-budget statement to protect the UK economy, and manufacturing in particular, where an already deteriorating situation has been exacerbated by the attack in the United States. The EEF's latest survey (conducted before the US attacks) shows that the engineering sector is now suffering worse conditions than during the recession of the early 1990s. The report states that UK engineering is now likely to contract by 2,5% this year, with growth set to recover by only 0,3% during 2002. Even worse is the fact that 150 000 jobs are expected to be lost throughout the industry by the end of the year, and a further 164 000 jobs expected to go during 2002. Although it is still too early to quantify the effects of the attack, the EEF said that the uncertainty dominating the global economy has had an impact on consumer confidence, suggesting a further difficult period ahead. By sector, the worst performers have been electronics and electrical equipment, down more than 18% since the start of the year. Motor vehicles were down 3%, and basic metals down 2%.
Revenue for static-RAM chips will continue a slow decline that began in the mid-1990s, drifting from $6,51 bn in 2000 to $4,01 bn in 2005, according to a new forecast from In-Stat Group. The analysts said that the biggest factor contributing to the decline is an ongoing migration from SRAM to embedded SRAM in high-complexity, customer-specific or ASIC applications as well as ASSP designs. Along with this was the sagging economy that has affected all memory products. According to the report, the SRAM business will be dominated by asynchronous memory designs. Communications systems will account for 80% of the SRAMs shipped in the first half of this decade, said the report.
With the uncertainty surrounding the regions with the largest oil resources - the main supply of US energy - the US will have to more seriously consider its alternative energy choices, including advanced technologies such as fuel cells and photovoltaics, said Allied Business Intelligence (ABI).
RF Micro Devices has again been recognised as one of the fastest-growing technology companies in North Carolina, receiving a 'North Carolina Technology Fast 50' award as part of a Deloitte & Touche-sponsored national programme. During the past fiscal year, RFMD posted the sixth-highest five-year growth rate in the state, achieving an increase of 2937%.
Already a staple in many PC models and peripherals, the IEEE-1394 high-speed digital interface is making gains in consumer electronics markets. According to In-Stat, in 2000, over 35 million PC-based and consumer electronics products were equipped with IEEE 1394. It believes that number will exceed 200 million by 2005. Although the market faces competition from other interfaces, such as USB 2.0 and DVI that may have significant impacts in selected markets, it expects positive market momentum this year, but at a much more moderate growth rate.
Technology
Intel has announced a new chip-packaging technology that it believes could enable the development of 20 GHz microprocessors by 2006 or 2007. Intel's Bumpless Build-Up Layer (BBUL) technology uses a proprietary bumpless-bonding manufacturing process that may allow a one-billion transistor processor on a chip only 1 mm thick.
Altera has unveiled a PLD-to-ASIC conversion product called 'HardCopy' to remove the burden of engineering effort from the customer. Prior to this HardCopy program says Altera, the only other alternative to designers for a low-cost masked solution has been conventional standard-cell or gate-array-based ASIC conversions. It claims these solutions take six to 12 months of development, consume engineering resources, and rack up significant nonrecurring engineering costs. The company says it can take a high-density APEX device or Excalibur embedded processor design and generate a HardCopy device that delivers equal or better performance and significantly lower power consumption. Once a customer's PLD design is final, Altera takes over and completes the migration to a HardCopy device. A working HardCopy prototype can be delivered in approximately eight weeks, claims the company.
Parthus Technologies has launched a GPS silicon IP and software platform that it claims delivers greatly enhanced indoor and outdoor positioning accuracy across a range of devices including mobile phones and vehicles. The NavStream 3000 platform has already been licensed to a number of leading industry players. While GPS technology offers high location accuracy, indoor environments have traditionally degraded accuracy performance, it says. Parthus claims the significant breakthrough with the NavStream 3000 is the rapid ability to determine location in practically any environment. Following extensive trials Parthus claims it can obtain position fixes in indoor environments including homes, office and industrial buildings in under 3,5 seconds. A further advantage of the system is that a person's elevation inside a building can also be calculated.
Lantronix has rolled out an integrated circuit that it claims can inexpensively connect devices such as industrial controllers and drives to Ethernet buses. Known as the DSTni (Device Server Technology Network Interface), the new chip serves as a simple means for the industrial automation community to connect devices, such as programmable logic controllers, operator terminals and variable speed motors, to networks that extend to the front office. Since most plants use device-level field buses like DeviceNet or Profibus, such connections have been problematic up to now, mainly because they are used for device-to-device connectivity, said the company.
Cambridge Silicon Radio is sampling the second generation of its single-chip CMOS Bluetooth digital and RF transceiver architecture. According to the company, BlueCore2 will halve power consumption and save customers 25% over the price of the BlueCore1. BlueCore1 includes the RF transceiver, baseband circuitry and a proprietary 16-bit microcontroller in one chip.
STMicroelectronics has announced two serial realtime clock (RTC) chips, expanding the company's M41Txx family of microprocessor supervisor ICs. The M41T94 has a serial peripheral interface (SPI), power-on-reset/low-voltage detector, low-battery monitor, programmable alarm and interrupt function, watchdog timer, push-button microprocessor reset, and non-volatile RAM. The M41T81 includes an RTC, programmable alarm and interrupt function, and watchdog timer. Both devices switch automatically to an optional external lithium battery should power fail, providing a write-protect function for added reliability.
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