Southern Africa
Providing a conduit for skills development and entrepreneurship in Africa, the Cape Information Technology Initiative (CITI) and second hand computer distributor, FreeCom Group, have committed to working together in narrowing the IT digital divide, through making technology more affordable and accessible to previously disadvantaged communities. Because computers are recycled from 'end of life' corporate users (some only 24 months old), FreeCom says it can sell these to a burgeoning first time buyer market, for about half the cost of a new computer. As well as making computers more affordable for SMMEs, NGOs and private users, there is also enormous benefit for schools and community centres, previously not able to join in the 'information and communication revolution'. Together with the facilitation of CITI, FreeCom Group is now looking to help companies in the UK and US donate computers to schools and community centres throughout Africa.
Multisource Telecoms has announced that its new chairman, Mathews Phosa, is leading a BEE consortium that will take a significant stakeholding in the company. Phosa says that this should be seen as a positive demonstration of the company's commitment to becoming a BEE-driven operation, and will see Multisource Telecoms becoming an even more reliable partner and a major player in the industry. "Not only will this secure access to key segments of the market such as the public sector, it will undoubtedly result in business development and growth," says Phosa. "More importantly, it is anticipated that this growth will take place over the entire African continent, not just in South Africa." Phosa adds that in many cases it is necessary to integrate old and new technologies to provide the most cost effective solution for Africa, and to date Multisource Telecoms has been able to supply custom designed solutions for a number of challenging applications in Africa.
Measuretest has been appointed as the sole distributor for Aeroflex in southern Africa. All of the separate companies that have been acquired by Aeroflex, including IFR, will now be united under a single, distinctive Aeroflex brand. Measuretest has also been appointed by Hioki of Japan as distributor in South Africa for its complete range of test equipment that includes recorders and clamp meters for inspection and maintenance of electric power equipment, medical electrical machines and hospital facilities.
Gauteng is gearing up for what is set to be the largest gathering of industrialists this year. The Blue IQ Smart Industry Expo will have nine specialised industry pavilions - sectors that have been recognised as vital for the economic growth of Gauteng: bio-technology; fluid power and air technology; process control, automation and electronics; logistics and supply chain management (including materials handling); energy technology and renewable energy; machine tools; information and communication technology (including industrial ICT interfacing); electrical switchgear; and financial and auxiliary services. The Expo is being held at the Sandton Convention Centre, from 22 to 24 October 2003.
The Cape Town Industrial Technology Show, which takes place in September next year has been renamed, EXCITE. The rebranded exhibition is expected to draw participants across the entire spectrum of industrial sectors driving the growth and development of the Western Cape economy. According to the organisers, Exhibitions for Africa, the event is ideal for technology thought leaders as well as buyers and suppliers to meet and discuss the products, services and solutions critical to competitive advantage and (industry) development in the Western Cape. The Cape IT Initiative (CITI) and the Information Technology Association (ITA) will run a technology conference alongside EXCITE.
South Africa's first conference on energising South African cities is to take place at the Cape Town International Convention Centre from 19-21 November 2003, in order to help equip cities to formulate and implement a city energy strategy within the context of their development strategy. Hosted by Sustainable Energy Africa, the City of Cape Town and the South African Cities Network, the conference will focus on energy as a cross-sectoral issue. See www.sustainable.org.za/CESConference.
Measuretest has moved to new premises at 47 Elephant Road, Monument Park, Pretoria. Postal address is Box 26829, Monument Park, Pretoria, 0105. Phone 012 452 0400 and Fax 012 452 0415.
Overseas
Business
Toshiba has revised its financial forecast showing a larger net loss of about $210m for its fiscal first half year, compared with an original projected loss of about $128m. The firm reported a net loss of about $225m in the first six months of the 2002 fiscal year. Toshiba blamed the wider loss on "worsening results in the 'digital products' sector, although 'electron devices' performed favourably."
Communications chip company Zarlink Semiconductor has lowered its financial estimates for the second quarter of its fiscal year 2004, by trimming 8% of its revenue forecast and now expects revenues of $47m, compared to its previous $51m.
Companies
Silicon Laboratories has signed an agreement to acquire Cygnal Integrated Products, a supplier of integrated 8-bit microcontrollers and other products. Cygnal's C8051F family of microcontrollers is positioned at the intersection of the 8-bit MCU and the high-performance analog markets, according to the company.
Tundra has announced that it has purchased Motorola's PowerPC host bridge product line. In addition, the two companies will collaborate on the development of next-generation interconnects for PowerPC architectures.
LSI Logic has agreed to sell its wafer fab in Tsukuba, Japan to Rohm for about 2,65 billion yen.
Intel has signed a memorandum of understanding with China's Ministry of Education (MOE) to co-develop a next-generation national computing grid, based on Intel's 64-bit Itanium processor family. The grid will connect 100 of China's leading universities. When completed, the MOE expects the grid to have a performance of more than 15 teraflops, making it one of the world's most powerful computing grids.
Pulse-Link and Fujitsu Microelectronics America have signed a development agreement, under which the companies are set to collaborate on the design of a digital baseband processor for ultra-wideband (UWB) designs. Pulse-Link is developing UWB wireless systems that provide 100-metre transmission ranges. In terms of the agreement, Fujitsu is to provide design and manufacturing services for a baseband processor, which is one of two ASICs that make up Pulse-Link's UWB systems.
Nokia has announced a reorganisation of its business structure. Effective 1 January, 2004, Nokia will be divided into four business groups - corporate-wide sales, marketing, logistics, manufacturing and technology units - as well as a corporate strategy, development and research unit. The change aims to strengthen the company's focus on convergence, new mobility markets and growth, said Nokia.
Seiko Epson and Renesas Technology will jointly develop open-standard specifications for a high-speed interface optimised for the display requirements of next-generation mobile applications. The totally new interface will be called 'mobile video interface'.
A new consortium in Japan plans to make contributions to popularisation and development of electronic books. The Electronic Book Business Consortium, currently represented by Ebook Initiative Japan, Panasonic Solution Systems, Toshiba and Keiso Shobo will support platforms for special e-book terminals, and discuss sales methods of content at book stores, useable data formats and content distribution methods.
Renesas Technology, the semiconductor company established by Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric, has signed a signed a cross-licensing agreement with Nazomi Communications, a provider of multimedia application processors and acceleration technology for the Java Platform, under which each can access the other's technologies for developing application processors in next-generation mobile phones. The deal means Nazomi will license to Renesas, its patented acceleration technology for the Java platform, while Tokyo-based Renesas will license to Nazomi intellectual property from the SH-Mobile application processors.
Advanced Micro Devices has collaborated with Advantech to deliver an x86-based customer development platform, based on the Geode GX2 processor. AMD recently acquired the Geode technology from National Semiconductor. Advantech's system-on-module (SOM) product is a complete system module, comprised of the GX2, chip set, and memory.
Huawei Technologies and Infineon Technologies are teaming to offer a wideband CDMA mobile phone platform for the China market, announced Infineon. Infineon will contribute the reference design and protocol stack software for the WCDMA mobile phone. Huawei provides testing experience and counts China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Netcom as customers.
Industry
The overall chip market grew by 9,5%, for the first half of 2003, according to market research organisation iSuppli. The top 10 chip companies by revenue for the period were, in order, (company; 1H03 sales; % change over 1H02; % of market): Intel, $12706m, 4,0%, 14,8%; Samsung, $4050m, 4,8%, 5,0%; Renesas, $3654m, n/a, 4,5%; Texas Insts, $3460m, 15,2%, 4,3%, Toshiba, $3367m, 12,5%, 4,1%, STMicro, $3320m, 13,7%, 4,1%; Infineon, $3237m, 29,3%, 4,0%; NEC, $2766, 12,2%, 3,4%; Philips, $2568m, 19,3%, 3,2%; Motorola, $2262m, -1,8% 2,8%; other, $40560m, 0,2%, 49,9%.
The Semiconductor Industry Association's (SIA) new figures for worldwide sales of semiconductors are $13,42 bn in August of 2003 - up 4% from $12,9 bn in July of this year. The August numbers represent the sixth consecutive monthly increase for the chip industry. For the month, PC-related products continued to be the strongest sector, with microprocessors up 7,8% and DRAMs up 11% over July, according to the SIA. The consumer sector, which includes DVD players and digital cameras, continued to strengthen with consumer application specific standard products (ASSP) up 5,3% and flash up 6,9% over last month. DSP was up 4,7% over July.
For the first time in over a year, the EDA industry has returned to positive year-over-year revenue growth, according to the EDA Consortium's Market Statistics Service (MSS). Total industry revenue for the second quarter of 2003 was $946m, up 8% over the second quarter of 2002, according to the latest MSS report. Findings for the quarter, compared to the same period a year ago: EDA product and maintenance revenue (excluding consulting and other services) totalled $883m, up 10%; PCB and multichip module (MCM) layout revenue was $85m, 17% higher; IC physical design and verification revenue totalled $285m, up 6%; computer-aided engineering (CAE), the largest tool category in EDA, generated $457m, a 4% increase; semiconductor intellectual property (SIP) more than doubled to $57m. Also, year over year, the hardware emulation category grew 30% while synthesis was flat. Design services were 11% less than Q2 2002.
Strategy Analytics has reported that the market for gallium arsenide ICs in wireless LAN applications in 2003 is set to more than double to reach $67m - a 139% worldwide market growth over 2002. The reason, according to the research firm, is a big leap from 802.11b and b/g wireless LAN solutions, to dual-band a/b/g wireless LANs that operate at 5 GHz as well as 2,4 GHz. It foresees a CAGR of 21% for 2003 through 2008 taking the annual market to about $172m in 2008, with switches and power amplifiers representing the main opportunities. GaAs power amplifiers would account for 67% of the 177 million units shipped in 2008, the company predicts.
The Wi-Fi hotspot industry continues to experience tremendous growth, aided by lower pricing points and standardisation of technology. Technology market research firm ABI believes that this growth will continue to accelerate, as companies and consumers adopt usage of the technology at a faster pace. One of the key beneficiaries of this growth is Wi-Fi access point suppliers, with shipments to hotspots growing about 50% on a compound basis to 2008. This growth, however, is not without its pitfalls. Issues facing the hotspot industry range from interoperability between hotspot locations to the need for operators and aggregators to acquire more users. Along with strong global demand for Wi-Fi services is a parallel demand for Wi-Fi hotspot equipment.
The number of worldwide broadband subscribers grew 72% in 2002 to approximately 62 million, according to a report issued by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The Republic of Korea leads the way in broadband penetration, with approximately 21 broadband subscribers for every 100 inhabitants. Hong Kong (China) ranks second in the world with nearly 15 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants and Canada ranks third with just over 11 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants.
As the amount of digital content available to the consumer and the desire to store it continues to increase, there has been a corresponding increase in the number of devices integrating hard disk drives, reports In-Stat/MDR. Because a growing number of consumers are interested in storing video content, the choice of magnetic hard drive storage over other formats continues to make the most sense, it says. This year, In-Stat/MDR estimates that consumer electronics with integrated hard drives will represent about 7% of the total hard drive market, which is nearly double that of 2002. The market is forecasted to grow from 9,3 million units in 2002 to about 16,7 million units this year.
Camera phones outsold digital still cameras (DSC) for the first time in the first half of the year, according to Strategy Analytics. The market research firm reported that 25 million camera phones were shipped worldwide in the first half, compared to 20 million DSCs in the same period. NEC and Panasonic were the top two vendors, each with a 15% market share in the first half. Nokia followed in third with a 14% share. Strategy Analytics forecasts that 65 million camera phones will be sold this year.
Unique UK was presented with an award for its commitment to demand creation and for taking designs through to production at Intel's European Distribution Conference in Berlin in September. Unique UK is currently the top Intel distributor in the UK.
Royal Philips Electronics has opened a factory for the production of liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) displays at its site in Boeblingen, Germany. The 20 million euro investment has created the first LCOS factory for mass production of panels for high-definition televisions. LCOS technology can produce high-resolution (1280 x 768), flicker-free images for projection televisions, according to Philips.
Technology
Hitachi has announced that it has developed a transistor manufacturing technology which could realise paper-thin next-generation flat panel displays. Hitachi uses a special organic material instead of silicon as the raw material and can make transistors thinner than 1 mm using a printing technology. It also claims the manufacturing cost is 1/10 that of silicon-based transistors. The new technology was jointly developed by Hitachi, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and Optoelectronic Industry and Technology Development Association.
STMicroelectronics claims it has managed to increase the power output of its light-emitting silicon technology by a factor of 50. Due to its band-gap silicon is not a natural emitter of light. However with nanometric structures made of silicon, nanometric films and dopants that influence the band-gap, researchers have made many advances. ST says its light-emitting silicon is based on the implantation of ions of rare-earth metals such as erbium or cerium, in a layer of silicon rich oxide (SRO). A significant aspect of ST's research is the ability to monolithically integrate all necessary elements - light emission, light waveguides and light detectors - for optical processing on a silicon chip, gaining the cost benefits of silicon manufacturing.
Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) has released what it claims is the world's first chip that supports both wLAN and the USB standard on the same device. The SiS162 is a media-access controller/baseband chip that supports the USB 2.0 and 802.11b standards, measuring 10 x 10 mm and supports standard interfaces such as Cardbus, Mini-PCI and PCI, according to the Taipei-based company.
NEC has developed what it says is a 'stable' fabrication technology for carbon nanotube transistors (CNTs), claiming that its fabrication technology attains more than 10 times greater transconductance than silicon MOS transistors. Transconductance measures the change in drain current in response to a change in input gate voltage. The larger this value the greater the operation speed of the transistor.
Researchers at Queen Mary College - University of London, claim to have developed a way to identify people by the way they use a computer mouse. This could be used for example, to verify identities for online shopping or transferring documents. The technique uses a neural network that learns movements of the mouse that are unique to individual users.
LG Electronics' soon to be released latest LG-G5300 mobile phone is equipped with a compass and location tracking software to indicate the direction of Mecca, the most sacred place to Muslims. The feature is targeted to Muslims who bow five times a day towards Mecca. LG Electronics intends to market the handset to Muslims in Arab nations and in Asian countries with a heavy Islamic population such as Malaysia and Indonesia.]
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