Southern Africa
Andile Ngcaba has joined Dimension Data South Africa (DDSA) to lead a BEE consortium, which will own 25% interest in DDSA, and to expand the penetration of DDSA throughout Africa. According to DDSA, once the BEE transaction has been implemented, Ngcaba will be appointed chairman designate with the view of being appointed chairman of DDSA within a year. He will also be appointed to the boards of DDSA's major subsidiaries.
Nederburg, one of South Africa's largest wine producers, has made the transition from analog camera surveillance to a fully-featured digital surveillance system from Intervid Africa at its premises on the outskirts of Paarl, Western Cape. Intervid also recently upgraded the video surveillance system at Wayne Rubber's Durban-based factory.
Local software developer, Attix5, showcased its mobile backup software, Backup-Professional ME, at the annual 3 GSM World Congress recently held in Cannes. According to Ian van Reenen, Attix5 CTO, the software was well received. "As users become more demanding, they require more value from their technology and mobile services. Our software enables users to backup and store critical data on their mobile devices just as they would on their PCs, and allows service providers to deliver a differentiated value-added offering," he said. Although 90% of service provider income is currently generated from voice traffic, van Reenen says that data traffic will be the main revenue earner in the near future, and this market is ideally suited to mobile phone backup.
Altech Informatics has concluded an agreement with Rockwell Software to become an official integrator of its plant automation and management information systems.
Westplex has been appointed as the re-seller of Basler Vision Components (Basler-VC) products and as the distributor of Matrox Imaging Products in South Africa. Basler-VC designs and builds advanced vision components for industrial use in the areas of machine vision, medical imaging, motion analysis and scientific imaging. Matrox is a designer of PC-based hardware and software for machine vision, image analysis and medical imaging.
Electrocomp has been appointed as sole distributor for Lifecell Batteries.
PPE Technologies has officially been appointed as Clearline Protection Systems' distributor for the Mpumulanga region. The official launch was held in March at the Mpumulanga Parks Board Conference Centre in Nelspruit. Pictured is Clearline's MD Jan Heijnen, officially handing over a certificate of distributorship to Mitch McAllister, founding member of PPE Technologies.
Overseas
Business
AMI Semiconductor (AMIS) reported record revenues of $454m, up from $345m in 2002 - an increase of 32%, which was spurred by a strong fourth quarter. The company experienced dramatic revenue growth in each of its target end markets: 44% in automotive, 27% in medical, 21% in industrial and 56% in communications. Its Integrated Mixed Signal Products business unit had revenue of $241m in 2003, an increase of 44% over 2002 sales. Accomplishments included three CAN and two wireless design-ins for ASSPs as well as design wins with key customers. The Structured Digital Products business unit generated $97m in revenue, an annual growth of 13%, with continued success of its XpressArray structured ASIC product line, while the Mixed Signal Foundry business unit generated $116m, reported AMIS.
Companies
Intelsat has completed a $961,1m purchase of the North American satellite assets of New York-based Loral Space & Communications. The deal gives Intelsat full satellite coverage of North America, as well as key customers in the broadcasting, cable television and corporate networking segments. Loral has four in-orbit satellites, as well as another under construction.
Broadcom has acquired Sand Video, a video compression technology specialist, for $77,5m.
Cadence Design Systems has agreed to buy Neolinear, a company that offers analog, mixed-signal and RF design tools. Neolinear's rapid analog design technology is critical for the consumer and communications markets where semiconductors are increasingly differentiated by their analog content, according to Cadence.
Herley Industries has acquired Communication Techniques for $15m in an all cash transaction. CTI is a supplier of microwave and RF components and integrated assemblies to the broadband communications industry.
Spectrum Control has acquired all of the outstanding common stock of Salisbury Engineering (SEI), a designer and manufacturer of a full line of RF and microwave components and systems used primarily in military and aerospace applications.
Kawasaki Microelectronics (KME) has licensed Sonics' entire family of SMART Interconnect IP technology. KME is a leader in advanced ASICs, and Sonics is a provider of System-on-Chip architectures and SMART Interconnect IP products.
Intellon, a US supplier of powerline networking chips, has acquired the engineering team and intellectual property of Toronto-based Cogency Semiconductor, a competing developer of powerline integrated circuits.
OSA Technologies has agreed to acquire Avocent for approximately $100m.
Cambridge Consultants (CCL) has sold its portfolio of 802.15.4 radio frequency (Zigbee) IC technology to US-based Ember. The deal gives Ember exclusive rights to CCL's 802.15.4 single-chip architecture, which supports low-power radio and a licence to use CCL's library of low-power radio components and a range of digital communications IP. The development team, now part of Ember, will be the core of an expanded European presence based at CCL's UK facilities in Cambridge.
M-Systems and Renesas Technology are working together to increase the availability of advanced multimedia mobile phone architecture. As part of this partnership, the companies are porting Mobile DiskOnChip onto the Solution Engine System Development Platform for Renesas' SH-Mobile Application Processor. Additionally, M-Systems has joined the Renesas Technology-sponsored SH-Mobile Consortium, a development community established to help the proliferation and rapid deployment of SH-Mobile processors and related products.
Intel has settled the remaining issues in a patent infringement suit with Intergraph that relates to Intel's Itanium processor. As part of the current agreement, Intel will pay Intergraph $225m.
Hitachi and Shin-Kobe Electric Machinery are reportedly in discussions toward establishing a joint venture company to market, develop and manufacture rechargeable lithium-ion batteries for hybrid electric vehicles (HEV). Currently, nickel metal-hydride rechargeable batteries are used as the main power source in HEV. Lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, however, have a higher energy density and power output, and can be made more compact and lightweight.
Industry
Worldwide sales of semiconductors in February 2004 rose 30,8% compared to February 2003, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association's latest report. While total sales of $15,58 bn reflect a modest 0,2% increase from January, the SIA noted that February historically has been a relatively weak month for chip sales. Sales of programmable logic devices and standard cells grew in February by 4,3%, driven by a recovery in the wireline communications market, it said. Microprocessor sales declined by 0,7%, reflecting historic patterns of subdued PC sales in the month. Sales in the US and Japan declined slightly, while all other geographic regions recorded increases, reported SIA.
Future Horizons' March newsletter predicts under-supply in the chip market would last well into 2005, and oversupply not arrive until the second half of 2005, or the first half of 2006. It says that the recovering global economy, new end-user products, and returning corporate investment in PC and telecoms, are driving end equipment growth.
The world's last optical fibre shortage ended in 2001 when demand peaked at 119 million km. Two years later in 2003, fibre shipments to cable manufacturers dropped by 47% to 63,5 million km. On the other hand, worldwide fibre-making capacity only decreased by 10% to 145 million km, down from 161 million km in 2001. This is according to a new KMI report, which says that this overcapacity has resulted in aggressive price competition. For the 47 fibre-manufacturing facilities that operated for at least part of 2003, average-capacity utilisation for all facilities was less than 50%, it says.
A new report from Forward Concepts states that the wireless-local area networking chip market grew by some 176% in 2003 to the $622m level, in spite of a 40% decline in overall average selling prices. It projects that overall WLAN chip revenues will continue to grow at a 38% compound annual rate to the $2,2 bn level in 2007.
By 2009, nearly 70% of all handsets are expected to be embedded with cameras, with a majority shifting to multimillion pixel resolutions, according to ABI Research. Most camera phones today have resolutions of 300 000 pixels, but manufacturers are moving quickly to improve the picture quality, it says.
The demand for LCD-TVs will drive growth in the worldwide market for liquid crystal displays at least through 2007, according to IDC. The LCD market, including those used in televisions, notebooks and desktop monitors, is expected to achieve a compound annual growth rate of 15% and grow to about $42 bn in 2007, up from about $24 bn in 2003. For 2004, the LCD market is expected to grow by 56% to $37 bn. By 2007, 43% of LCD-TV panels would be over 76 cm in size, it predicts.
Despite many years of delays, it seems to be better late than never for 3G wireless deployments, reports research firm In-Stat/MDR. Despite all the problems associated with 3G, a fair number of operators have launched commercial services and many other carriers have purchased infrastructure equipment, but have yet to deploy 3G commercially. It says the delays in the rollout of 3G can be attributed to many factors, but the main three would be the lack of good inexpensive handsets, technical issues, and a general lack of consumer interest. Although good handsets are appearing in greater numbers, In-Stat says that the last piece of the puzzle to fall into place is demand for 3G from the consumer - which may be the biggest challenge for 3G.
IBM has outlined plans to create a broad community of development for its Power Architecture. It likens the new level of collaboration to the open source software movement, saying that innovation in the IT industry is now impossible without broad collaboration across the industry. IBM said the 'community model' will free developers from the restraints of the proprietary processor model, although the basic instruction set would remain 'highly controlled'.
The PC/104 Embedded Consortium has published its PCI-104 specification. PCI-104 is identical to the popular PC/104-Plus combined ISA/PCI embedded standard except that the PC/104 ISA expansion connector is removed. According to the group ( www.pc104.org), by eliminating the large ISAbus connector, PCI-104 yields an additional 10% of board area for larger CPU chipsets, higher levels of integration and/or I/O connectors. The PCI-104 specification still maintains the small 90 x 96 mm size, rugged design, and self-stacking architecture for embedded applications set by the PC/104 and PC/104-Plus standards.
Broadband subscribers exceeded 100 million globally at the end of 2003, according to a report from RHK. Its new Broadband Access Networks Program report also states that the Asia-Pacific market has some of the highest broadband penetration in the world.
Infineon Technologies has opened an RFID Solution Excellence Center and System Lab in Graz, Austria, to provide solutions for logistics applications.
Agilent Technologies has established a system-on-a-chip (SOC) design centre in Gurgaon, India. The centre, part of an existing facility that employs 1000 Agilent workers, provides ASIC and system design services to customers of Agilent's ASIC Products Division.
Rohde & Schwarz has announced that as of 1 June 2004 it will handle all sales and service activities for its Test & Measurement (T&M) products in the US and Canada. These activities have been managed by Tektronix since 1993.
US animal protection group American Humane, has admonished RFID chip suppliers saying that vendors are more interested in gaining market share than the protection of animals. The organisation said that with all the different brands of RFID chips currently being sold, there was no single scanner currently available that could read them all. 'Manufacturers supplying the US have put their market share over the best interest of animals by failing to provide universal scanners that can read all the chips and failing to widely distribute scanners to shelters and veterinarians,' stated American Humane's director of animal programs.
Actel has announced it has shipped the one-millionth unit of its successful flash-based ProASICPLUS FPGA family. The milestone shipment is significant for Actel because it claims the cost-effective ProASICPLUS family, which was introduced just two years ago, now holds the distinction of having the largest installed base of any flash-based FPGA solution. Further, with well over 1000 design starts worldwide, this product has the fastest customer acceptance rate in Actel's history, it says.
The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) 2004 Annual Report is now available for download at www.semichips.org/downloads/SIA_AR_2004.pdf
Technology
Texas Instruments has announced it will unveil digital radio technology it says will allow it to combine multiple cellular phone functions into one digital chip by the end of this year. The new digital radio frequency processor was already in use on certain networking products and has been proven to work in lab tests for cellular telephony based on the GSM standard popular in Europe, said TI.
Intel has introduced four new processors for mobile PCs: the Low Voltage Intel Pentium M processor at 1,30 GHz, the Ultra-Low Voltage Intel Pentium M processor at 1,10 GHz, the Intel Celeron M processor at 1,40 GHz and the Ultra Low Voltage Intel Celeron M processor at 900 MHz.
Ramtron has developed and will soon begin sampling what it claims is the world's first 1-megabit ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM). The device comes in a 128-Kbit x 8 organisation. A FRAM is nonvolatile and performs reads and writes like a RAM. It provides reliable data retention for 10 years while eliminating the complexities, overhead, and system level reliability problems caused by EEPROM and other nonvolatile memories, according to the company.
The world's first consumer application of an electronic paper display module is being used in Sony's new e-Book reader, 'LIBRIé'. The e-Book uses Philips electronic paper display featuring E Ink's revolutionary electronic ink technology, which is claimed to offer a truly paper-like reading experience with contrast the same as newsprint. The display is reflective and can be easily read in bright sunlight or dimly lit environments while being able to be seen at virtually any angle. Its black and white ink-on-paper look, combined with a resolution in excess of most portable devices is approximately 170 pixels per inch (PPI). LIBRIé is similar in size and design to a paperback book, and can store up to 500 downloaded books.
7 April marked the 40th anniversary of IBM's System/360 mainframe, responsible for introducing many important technologies that are still in use today. In 1964, the IBM System/360 Model 40 served as a powerful standalone system in the intermediate price range, performing a variety of computations.
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