Southern Africa
Keops Altech and Isis, both subsidiaries of Altech, are currently in the process of merging certain operations into Keops Altech. The integration is in line with Altech's restructuring of its IT assets following the acquisition of Namitech to focus more closely on the convergence of telecommunications, multimedia and information technology (TMT). Keops Altech says it focuses mainly on the manufacturing industry whilst Isis traditionally operated in the defence, aviation and corporate industries. This is with the exception of the SAP Practice that had mainly manufacturing clients. Despite these, the SAP Practice and the Contracting division, the two Isis divisions affected by the merger, the company says that the changes will significantly enhance the business offering of Keops Altech and will now put it in a position to offer integrated IT business solutions covering Automation and Control, Manufacturing Execution Systems, ERP as well as managed services to become a one-stop solution provider for its clients.
Landis+Gyr, supplier of the Cashpower range of prepayment metering solutions, has been awarded 48% of the Eskom National Contract for the provision of prepayment electricity meters. Landis+Gyr's portion of the contract is valued at more than R50m. The contract will cover the supply of the Cashpower Sabre ECU for the period from August 2003 to the end of July 2004.
A silicon inertial measurement unit made by BAE Systems has been selected for use on the South African Army's unmanned aerial observation system (UAOS) tactical aircraft. SA aircraft developer Advanced Technologies & Engineering chose the SiIMU silicon micro-machined electro-mechanical inertial measurement unit for the vehicle's autopilot and strap-down inertial navigation system. According to BAE Systems, the SiIMU sensor uses the world's first silicon micro-machined ring gyroscope technology, and is a fully-compensated 6-degree-of-freedom rate and linear acceleration measurement unit.
Grafoplast Wiremarkers Africa has been appointed the southern African distributor for Cabur of Italy. Grafoplast markets a range of spring clamp polyamide, polyamide push-on, melamine and cable clamp terminal blocks and now adds DIN rail mount electronics and accessories to its line-up. The electronic products for electrical boards covers analog converters; relays; power supplies, passive interface modules and PLC/CN interface modules.
Electrocomp has been appointed as sole local distributor for the following: Arcol UK - aluminium-housed resistors; Hi-Tech Resistors - specialised resistors; WECO - connectors and electronic modules; High & Low Corporation - EMI/RFI filters.
Huaxing Varistor of China is seeking agents for its products in South Africa. A manufacturer of premium quality varistors used in surge protective devices, the company says it is ISO9002 and UL-certified and has over 33 years of professional manufacturing experience. For information contact Youxue Chen, [email protected].
Testerion is holding a free 'lead free' information seminar on the 17th September at the ADEC Exhibition at the Kyalami Exhibition Centre. Gary Cunning, exports manager from Alpha Metals and Heinz Zimmermann from Suba Engineering will be present. Contact Landy Du Plessis, 011 704 3020, fax 011 462 9461, [email protected].
The second World Wind Energy Conference & Renewable Energy Exhibition (WWEC) has been scheduled for 23-26 November, Cape Town International Convention Centre, South Africa. SBS Conferences, the organisers, say that over 120 speakers and 40 poster presentations have been confirmed from 33 different countries. The speakers' panel consists of high-level government representatives, international scientists and experienced entrepreneurs. The event has attracted strong support from the Department of Minerals and Energy and has been generously sponsored by several international government bodies. Over 60 wind energy organisations are supporting the event. The conference will discuss steps for the further proliferation of wind energy, and a special focus will be on how to bring wind energy to developing and African countries. See www.sbs.co.za/wwec2003 for the complete WWEC programme.
Overseas
Business
International Rectifier reported a net income of $13,2m, on sales of $228,4m in its fourth fiscal quarter of 2003, compared to a net income of $16,1m on sales of $201,0m in the prior-year quarter. Results included a $3,8m charge related to previously-announced severance and restructuring. IR said that revenue was at the upper end of guidance, increasing 6% sequentially and 13% year over year. Sales of proprietary products grew 10% over the prior quarter and 32% over the prior year and now account for 58% of sales. For fiscal year 2003, IR posted a net loss of $89,6m on sales of $864,4m.
Analog Devices has announced a net income of $79m on revenues of $520,4m for Q3 2003. Revenues increased 17% from the same quarter a year-ago and up 4% compared to the previous quarter. Revenue grew quarter-to-quarter across a broad base of applications within the computer, communications, consumer, and industrial markets that Analog Devices serves. DSP product revenues for the quarter accounted for approximately 22% of company revenues and grew 4% sequentially and 28% compared to the same period last year, said the company.
Sharp reported $4,26 bn in revenue and $214,17m in operating profit for the period April to June 2003. The revenue for the period was up 7,2% and operating profit was up 17% from the previous year. Sales in the semiconductor department were active, particularly imagers for cellular phones such as CCD and CMOS sensors, contributing $315,8m in sales, up 71% from the previous year.
Companies
Aeroflex, a US developer and manufacturer of automated testing solutions and microelectronics for the aerospace, defence and broadband communications markets, has announced that it has acquired the Racal Wireless Solutions Group of the UK for cash of $38m and a deferred payment of up to $16,5m in either cash or Aeroflex stock, depending on the Wireless Solutions Group achieving certain performance goals for the year ending July, 2004. Racal Wireless is a developer, manufacturer and integrator of digital wireless testing and measurement solutions.
Cookson Group, UK has made a strategic decision to refocus on its core business of developing and producing advanced materials for the electronics industry. As a result, Cookson announced that it will sell its equipment group known as Speedline Technologies. The sale will include the MPM, Camalot, Electrovert and Accel brands of Speedline. At the time of printing, Cookson was still considering various potential buyers for Speedline. Cookson Electronics said it will refocus and is committed to developing and producing advanced materials for the electronics industry. It also intends to maintain strong technical cooperation with Speedline and its new owners to continue multiple joint R&D and process application projects both in SMT and semiconductor packaging.
National Semiconductor has agreed to sell its Information Appliance (IA) business unit to Advanced Micro Devices for an undisclosed amount. The IA business unit consists primarily of the Geode family of microprocessor products. As the unit stands it accounts for less than 5% of National's annual revenue, according to the company.
Infineon Technologies is forming a $12m joint venture with United Expitaxy Company (UEC), a maker of fibre-optic components. Infineon's share will be 56% in the new venture. UEC produces products ranging from conventional LEDs and ultra bright AlGaInP and InGaN LEDs to laser diodes, high speed infrared LEDs and HBT wafers.
Following the liquidation of the UK's Bulgin Power Source at the end of 2002, a group of its former employees have set up a new power supply manufacturing company: VxI Power will design and manufacture intelligent, battery-backed power supplies and custom PSUs for low- to medium-power applications. As well as acquiring the intellectual property rights and most of the stock and assets of Bulgin Power Source, the company has also recruited key team leaders made redundant by Bulgin.
Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC Plasma Display, Matsushita Electric and Pioneer have set up a new company to promote technology development of plasma displays. Called APDC (Advanced PDP Development Corporation) the company is headquartered in Tokyo. The group will work together to develop energy-saving next generation PDP devices, and focus on improving the emission efficiency of PDPs and saving energy in the manufacturing process.
IBM and Raytheon have announced plans to co-develop custom semiconductors and systems for aerospace and defence applications. IBM says the agreement could account for as much as $100m in revenue for IBM over the next five years. The companies will combine Raytheon's expertise in defence electronics technology and IBM's efforts in chip design, software development, large systems computer architecture, and network integration. They intend to jointly market the solutions they design.
Samsung Electronics and Staccato Communications have signed an agreement to develop ultra-wideband-based (UWB) technology and applications for wireless personal networking. The technology is to be based on multiband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technology, and deliver data rates up to 480 Mbps.
BAE Systems has been awarded a $10,5m contract for 10 AIMS antenna group systems for the US Navy and for the governments of Korea and Japan. The antennas are one component of the 'Air Traffic Control Radar Beacon System, Identification, Friend or Foe, MKXII, System', also known as AIMS. The AIMS antenna group is comprised of an antenna, antenna position programmer and a below-deck control unit used to locate and identify aircraft as friend or foe. The AIMS antenna consists of 64 radiating elements arrayed in a circle around the ship's mast. The beam is steered electronically.
Samsung Electronics has announced that it will make and sell 'Memory Stick' media under licence from Sony starting in the third quarter of 2003. The Memory Stick is the physical format of a non-volatile solid-state memory first introduced by Sony. The move is intended to strengthen the Memory Stick format's position as the global standard within the memory card market, said Sony.
Industry
In these difficult times for the semiconductor industry, one bright spot which continues to shine is general purpose processing. According to a recent study from IMS Research, the world market for general purpose 16/32/64-bit microcontrollers, non-compute processors and DSPs is forecast to grow from $9,5 bn in 2002 to almost $16,0 bn in 2007, a CAGR of 11,0%. "General purpose processors did not benefit from the hype and glamour of the Dot Com years in the way of, say, network processors," commented report author Colin Barnden. "However, in the famine that has followed the feast, their ubiquitous nature has proved their greatest strength; the problems which beset the communications and computer industries over the last two years have been off-set by steady growth in industrial and consumer and strong growth in automotive."
Semico Research predicts a 10,7% growth for the IC industry in 2003, followed by a 21-23% upturn in 2004, and then another downturn in 2005. Semico says that the IC industry is in the midst of a slow, modest recovery, but adds that there is both good and bad news for the industry. Good news: IC unit growth and fab-utilisation rates remain high in the industry. Bad news: the average selling prices (ASPs) for ICs remain down, as vendors are cutting prices to maintain their market shares. Semico's previous prediction for 2003 was 17% growth, but now it forecasts only a 'lacklustre recovery' in the second half of this year.
Electronics output in Eastern Europe, boosted by strong inward investment, increased by 6% in 2001 to reach $19,2 bn. A recent report published by Reed Electronics Research, part of the Yearbook of World Electronics Data series, expects output in the region to remain buoyant despite the current difficulties being experienced in other regions of the world. It estimates the total market in the 10 major countries of Eastern Europe as $30,8 bn in 2001. East Europe countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) account for 75% of the total and the FSU countries of Russia and Ukraine, 25%. It forecasts that production in East Europe - specifically - will increase by 4,0% in 2002 and 7,9% in 2003. As OEMs and contract manufacturers look to Eastern Europe as a means to reduce production costs, the region as a whole is continuing to benefit, it says.
'The digital market for gallium arsenide chips is dead' according to analysis company Strategy Analytics. It said that from a high of $600m in 2000, revenues from digital GaAs ICs collapsed to $55m in 2002. As a result in 2002 the GaAs IC market was reduced not only in terms of number of overall companies actively pursuing the market, but also in terms of the total available market opportunity, it said. However, the collapse in digital was offset by the 7% expansion in the GaAs monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) market.
Intel's aggressive push of Centrino on the client side and the emergence of wireless switching on the infrastructure side are the two major forces transforming the business Wi-Fi market in 2003, reports In-Stat/MDR. The high-tech market research firm expects that 16 million notebook PCs with embedded Wi-Fi will ship to businesses this year, and that by 2005, Wi-Fi will be included in 95% of notebooks as a standard feature.
The market for Zigbee, the low bandwidth, low-cost alternative to the Bluetooth wireless LAN system, is starting to make significant progress, says research company Future Horizons. The company's latest newsletter says the market for Zigbee chips will register for the first time in 2004 with a value of $20m, before accelerating to reach $90m in 2005, $330m in 2006, and $630m in 2007. Unit volumes should climb from 6 million in 2004 to 450 million in 2007. Zigbee, with an upper data transmission limit of about 250 Kbps, is aimed at home, industrial and office automation, and consumer electronics applications.
Between 2002 and 2007 the overall automotive subsystems market is set to grow at 6,7% a year, to progress from $106,4 bn in 2002 to $147,2 bn in 2007, according to research and consulting company Strategy Analytics. The growth would be driven by legislative, environmental, competitive and consumer demands. Strategy Analytics mentions as high growth application areas: drowsiness monitors, electric parking brakes, tyre pressure warning, brake-by-wire, night-vision systems, electric drive-trains, passive entry, distance warning, electronic four-wheel steer-by-wire and exterior LED lighting.
Research firm In-Stat/MDR, says that the next five years will see a dramatic slowing of worldwide cellular subscriber growth. However, despite the fact that there has been a lot of fuss about the 'catastrophic slowdown' in subscriber growth, there will be more than 931 million new subscribers over the next five years. By 2007, it estimates that the total worldwide wireless population will exceed two billion subscribers.
Market research firm Gartner reports that semiconductor capital spending in 2002 declined 38% to $27,7 bn. In 2003 it predicts capital spending will grow just 8% to about $29,9 bn with the most investment growth expected in Japan and Europe.
Cypress Semiconductor is phasing out its programmable logic business, leaving that market to the chip companies that focus exclusively on programmable logic devices (PLDs), it said.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association (IEEE-SA) has approved amendments to two wireless networking standards. One - IEEE 802.11F - sets specifications so access point devices from different vendors in IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLAN) can interoperate. The other - IEEE 802.16/Conformance01 - allows end-users to evaluate how well a product designed for IEEE 802.16 wireless municipal area networks (WMAN) conforms to the standard.
A new report from San Francisco analyst firm WR Hambrecht + Co, says that shipments of digital cameras totalled 9,5 million in the second quarter of 2003, up 29% from the previous quarter. It forecasts now that total digital camera shipments in 2003 could be in the range of 40-45 million units, up from the previous forecast of 35-40 million units in 2003.
The total handset market increased to 107 million units in second quarter 2003, demonstrating a marginal increase of 2% sequentially, and 12% growth year-on-year, according to findings by technology market research firm ABI.
Broadcom is to pay Intel $60m in cash as part of a settlement of all outstanding litigation between the companies and their affiliates with respect to a patent lawsuit over graphics chips. Additionally, Broadcom and Intel entered into a separate comprehensive cross-licence agreement covering patents owned or controlled by either party or its subsidiaries.
Technology
Galaxy Power ( www.galaxypower.com) claims to have developed breakthrough lithium-ion battery charging technology with its 'pulse charge/termination method' incorporated in its QuickSaver product line. The method, based on a special charging algorithm, allows Li-Ion batteries to be fully charged in approximately one hour compared to existing methods that take up to 3,5 hours, it says.
MangoDSP, a manufacturer of multiprocessing hardware and software DSP solutions for the embedded systems market has opened its 'Win A DSP Expert Challenge'. The challenge is open to companies all over the world who are interested in winning a free two-day consultation with MangoDSP's top expert on any DSP-related development. The winner will be selected based on the complexity of the development problem submitted. Says VP international sales, Yinon Kotzer, "We want companies to know that they do not have to waste valuable resources attempting to solve complex development problems on their own."
© Technews Publishing (Pty) Ltd | All Rights Reserved
printer friendly version