South Africa

• Avnet South Africa has appointed a new IPE (interconnect, passive and electromechanical) field applications engineer, Quatraine Domoney. She will be based in the company’s Johannesburg office.

• Electrocomp has added three new agencies to its stable, in the form of enclosure manufacturers Hammond Manufacturing and Ritec, and supercapacitor and ultracapacitor manufacturer Vinatech.

Overseas

Business

• Analog Devices announced financial results for its fourth quarter and fiscal year 2018, which ended on 3 November. Revenue totalled $1,6 billion in the fourth quarter, up 2% sequentially and up 4% year-over-year. Annual revenue amounted to $6,2 billion, up 21% year-over-year, which resulted in earnings per share (EPS) of $3,97.

• Maxim Integrated Products reported net revenue of $638 million for its first quarter of fiscal 2019 ended 29 September 2018, a 1% increase from the $633 million revenue recorded in the prior quarter, and an 11% increase from the same quarter of last year. Based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), diluted earnings per share in the September quarter were $0,70.

• For the three months ended 30 September 2018, Microchip Technology reported record net sales of $1,433 billion, up 18,1% sequentially and up 41,5% from the year-ago quarter. Net income was $96,3 million, earnings per share were $0,38, and a record quarterly dividend of 36,45 cents per share was declared.

• National Instruments announced Q3 2018 revenue of $346 million, up 8% year over year. Net income was $43 million, with fully diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $0,32.

Companies

• Taoglas announced the completion of its acquisition of ThinkWireless, an antenna provider that specialises in the design, development and production of combination antenna systems for the commercial vehicle market. The ThinkWireless antennas are available from local distributor, RF Design.

• Infineon Technologies announced it has acquired Siltectra, a startup which has developed an innovative technology (called Cold Split) to process crystal material efficiently and with minimal loss of material. Infineon will use the Cold Split technology to split silicon carbide (SiC) wafers, thus doubling the number of chips out of one wafer. A purchase price of 124 million Euros was agreed on with the venture capital investor MIG Fonds, the main shareholder.

• Cree has signed a multi-year agreement to produce and supply its Wolfspeed silicon carbide (SiC) wafers to STMicroelectronics. The agreement governs the supply of a quarter billion dollars of Cree’s advanced 150 mm SiC bare and epitaxial wafers to STMicroelectronics during this period of accelerating growth and demand for silicon carbide power devices, particularly in automotive and industrial applications.

Industry

• The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $41,4 billion for the month of November 2018, an increase of 9,8% from the November 2017 total of $37,7 billion but 1,1% less than the October 2018 total of $41,8 billion. Regionally, year-to-year sales increased in China (17,4%), the Americas (8,8%), Europe (5,8%), Japan (5,6%), and Asia Pacific/All Other (4,4%).

• The Edge Computing Consortium Europe (ECCE) has been established, with the aim of driving adoption of the edge computing paradigm within the manufacturing and other industrial markets. With members including the likes of Intel, Renesas, Harting, Analog Devices, Arm, IBM, National Instruments and around a dozen more vendors and organisations, the initiative will seek to develop specifications for a reference architecture model, technology stacks, identify gaps and recommend best practices for edge computing nodes.

• Research conducted by IC Insights has shown that the world’s leading semiconductor suppliers significantly increased their market share over the past decade. The top 5 semiconductor suppliers accounted for 47% of the world’s semiconductor sales in 2018, an increase of 14 percentage points from 10 years earlier. In total, the 2018 top 50 suppliers represented 89% of the total $514,0 billion worldwide semiconductor market last year, up 7 percentage points from the 82% share the top 50 companies held in 2008.