austriamicrosystems, a European (headquartered in Austria) semiconductor manufacturer focused on the design and manufacture of high performance analog ICs, has opened an office in South Africa. The company develops and produces both customised and standard analog semiconductors, including ASICs (application specific integrated circuits). The company is listed in Zurich and posted revenues of 178 million Euros for the 2005 fiscal.
Heading up the local office will be Dave Simpson, a 6-year veteran of the company. Simpson and his family left South Africa six years ago to take up a position with austriamicrosystems in Austria and jumped at the opportunity of returning and opening the local office. Currently, the company is based in Port Elizabeth, but will deal with customers nationally as well as the expected increased demand from southern Africa.
The company sees Africa as a future growth opportunity and is therefore creating a solid base in South Africa, supported by two distributors. Carlo Rebughini, senior vice president of sales at austriamicrosystems, says the company is already represented across the globe and recently embarked on an effort to extend its representation in emerging markets.
austriamicrosystems focuses on the areas of power management, sensors and sensor interfaces, portable audio and car access in the communications, medical and automotive markets. The company runs its own state-of-the-art manufacturing and test facilities globally, driven from Austria, and additionally functions as a vertically-integrated service provider.
Altogether, austriamicrosystems employs over 850 people in Europe, America, Asia and Africa. It hosts a large pool of design engineers and PhDs to keep it at the forefront of analog and mixed-signal product design (such as CMOS, HV-CMOS, SiGe - silicon germanium - and embedded memory) and process development. Investing 17% of revenues in R&D, the company is determined to ensure it remains ahead of the pack.
Rebughini notes that the company specialises in low-power consumption products, and sees its solutions being used in MP3 players, MEMS microphones, diabetic blood glucose measurement systems, automotive safety systems such as ESP, solid-state electricity meters, sensor interfaces and other applications. Although austriamicrosystems is new to the South African market, its electronics are to be found everywhere, including in the top three selling cellular phone brands on the market.
To keep its quality levels to the highest international standards, austriamicrosystems has been ISO/TS 16949:2002 and ISO/TS 13485:2003 certified.
austriamicrosystems has built its reputation on quality products that lead the industry in the analog and mixed-signal markets. With a clear roadmap to take it into the future with these and new products, it believes this will allow it to keep its global lead. It may even be looking at grabbing a few analog engineers from South Africa to meet its technical needs.
For more information contact Dave Simpson, +27 (0)41 581 8401, [email protected]
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