Southern Africa
Sentech hosted the recent Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) Work Group and Project Management Committee (PMC) meetings in Gauteng. The meetings began with opening remarks by Dr Sebiletso Mokone-Matabane, CEO of Sentech; followed by an update on progress and milestones of the EASSy project. The conference was attended by MOU Party delegates from more than 20 international telecoms operators. Tenders for the EASSy project were received towards the end of 2005. The process of tender evaluation is currently ongoing by the Procurement Working Group. Sentech expects a decision to be announced in the second quarter of 2006. The EASSy project is driven by the need to link East Africa to the global fibre-optic network, with telecom operators from a number of African countries having joined together to connect the last remaining coast of Africa to the digital world. The cable will be a 9900 km high-performance fibre-optic cable, running from Mtunzini in South Africa to Port-Sudan, with landings in six other countries. A comprehensive backhaul system will ensure that land-locked African countries and others will also benefit from the EASSy project.
Liberty Life has awarded a R1,2m contract to Saab Grintek to upgrade its call centre voice recording to a state-of-the-art NiceLog digital system including supporting servers and a central storage solution.
Electrocomp has announced that it has been appointed as a distributor for Microchip Technology in South Africa.
Spectrum Concepts has moved to new premises at: 116 Pretoria Road, Rynfield, Benoni, 1505. Tel: +27 (0)11 425 1400; Fax: 088 +27 (0)11 425 2429, [email protected]
Overseas
Business
Semiconductor supplier STMicroelectronics recorded net earnings of $183m on sales of $2,39 bn, compared with $187m on sales of $2,33 bn in the year-ago quarter. The company said sales growth was driven by wireless applications, which generated double-digit percentage increases both sequentially and year-over-year. For 2005, ST earned $266m on sales of $8,88 bn.
RF Micro Devices posted net earnings of $14,7m on sales of $208,0m in the third fiscal 2006 quarter, up from $0,58m on sales of $168,9m in the year-ago quarter. In the previous quarter, RFMD earned $5,9m on sales of $177m. The company attributed the high revenue to strong sales of power amplifier modules, transmit modules and Polaris transceiver solutions, as well as robust sales to handset makers.
Japan-based NEC Electronics has posted an operating loss of ¥7 bn and a net loss of ¥2,6 bn for the fiscal 2005 third quarter on sales of ¥163 bn.
Semiconductor supplier Fairchild Semiconductor recorded a net loss of $4,7m on fourth quarter sales of $370,8m, compared with net earnings of $15,8m on sales of $379,4m in the year-ago quarter.
FPGA chip specialist Altera reported Q4 sales of $281,9m, up 18% from the fourth quarter of 2004 and down 3% from Q3 of 2005. Net income for the quarter was $69,7m, up 20% compared with net income of $58,0m in the fourth quarter of 2004. Altera announced 2005 sales of $1,12 bn, up 11% from 2004.
Companies
LED technology provider Lumidrives has been purchased by Dialight, a market leader in applied LED technology, in a £3m deal. The purchase will enable Lumidrives to continue investment and help the company gain a larger share of the global LED market, especially in the USA where Dialight has a strong presence. Lumidrives will operate under the name Dialight-Lumidrives and will still be based at Knaresborough, North Yorkshire.
Broadcom is acquiring privately-owned fabless chip company, Sandburst, which specialises in chipsets for Ethernet and IP switches, for $80m. Sandburst was one of the first chip designers to demonstrate scalable packet switching and routing SoCs that are now widely used in enterprise core and metropolitan Ethernet networks.
SiRF Technology Holdings has acquired Impulsesoft, an Indian-based provider of Bluetooth stereo solutions and embedded software, for $15m in cash and stock.
The Hemisphere GPS Division of CSI Wireless has acquired Del Norte Technology of Texas, for $940 000.
Spansion, the flash memory chip maker being spun off from AMD, has announced it would collaborate with Japanese DRAM maker Elpida Memory, to bring multidie memory subsystems to the wireless market.
Cypress Semiconductor has announced that it has exited the search-engine chip business, and is selling the assets to NetLogic Microsystems in a deal worth up to $70m. Under the agreement, NetLogic will acquire Cypress' Ayama 10000, Ayama 20000, and NSE70000 network search engine families as well as the Sahasra 50000 algorithmic search engine family.
LCD supplier LG Philips LCD has launched an Applications Business division to focus on the small to mid-size, thin-film-transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) business. Applications for such displays are growing in devices such as mobile phones, digital cameras, MP3 players, portable DVD players, automotive displays, and industrial and medical monitors.
Plastic fastener and cable management accessories specialist, Heyco, has changed its name to Anixter Components and has extended its product offering with a wide selection of industrial and commercial adhesives.
Harting has restructured its UK operations in Northampton, with the creation of a new company, Harting UK, which will act as the holding company for two separate operating entities: Harting, the existing UK sales subsidiary; and Harting Integrated Solutions, a completely new legal entity which covers the backplane manufacturing operations.
Nokia, Intel, Texas Instruments and Modeo have joined together to form the Mobile DTV Alliance. The group will promote DVB-H (digital video broadcasting - handheld) which is an open standard for broadcasting video to handheld/mobile devices. Using DVB-H users will be able to receive live TV on their mobile phones that are enabled to receive these signals. Also, interactive programming like video-on-demand will be available on these new handsets. More than 10 trials are currently underway around the world and most US markets are expected to have some form of DVB-H by 2007.
InterDigital Communications and Infineon Technologies have expanded their cooperative development and marketing agreement to include the joint development of HSDPA (high speed downlink packet access) 3G protocol stack software technology for Infineon's 3G platform.
The Siemens Automation and Drives Group has strengthened its position with respect to modular terminal blocks and overvoltage protection products by means of a strategic partnership with Phoenix Contact. The two companies have agreed that Phoenix Contact will from now on be responsible for production and further development of the terminal blocks for Siemens. The agreement awards to Phoenix Contact the rights to use the existing Siemens program as well as its production capacity in Greece. Siemens also now purchases exclusively from Phoenix Contact any terminal block and overvoltage protection products that are marketed as part of the Siemens brand.
Analog and mixed-signal supplier, Maxim Integrated Products, and its subsidiary, Dallas Semiconductor, are working with RAD Data Communications to produce the TDM over Packet (ToP) chips. RAD will develop a circuit emulation 'core' based on its key technologies, to be incorporated by Dallas, alongside its own integrated T1/E1/J1 transceiver technologies, into the ToP chips. The ToP solution will be the only TDM-over-Ethernet/IP/MPLS (ToP) family of devices to provide circuit emulation over PSN capability and Dallas' framer and line interface unit (LIU) in the same device.
Kontron has joined with four other companies to found the E2Brain Interest Group (Embedded Electronic Brain): these pioneering companies are MAZeT and Ultratronik, both from Germany, Odyssee (France), and UniControls (Czech Republic). The goal of the E2Brain Interest Group is the joint development and marketing of RISC-based COMs designed around E"Brain - the recently published COM standard from Kontron.
The Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology (MIET) has selected Cadence Design Systems as its sole provider of design technologies to help the institute develop the Russian electronics industry and provide local startup companies better access to the global industry. A broad range of the company's technology, including its virtual integrated CAD (VCAD) service model and Cadence kits, will be deployed in a new project called 'Inspire the Russian Innovation System' (IRIS).
Industry
Over 1,3 billion radio frequency identification (RFID) tags were produced in 2005, and by 2010, that figure will soar to 33 billion, according to In-Stat predictions. However, production will vary widely by industry segment for several years. For example, RFID has been used in automotive keys since 1991, with 150 million units now in use. This quantity greatly exceeded other segments until recently. By far the biggest RFID segment in coming years will be supply chain management, which will account for the largest number of tags/labels from 2005 through 2010.
Western Europe saw 4 million extra W-CDMA subscribers in the fourth quarter of last year, equivalent to 32,3% of the region's 12,4 million total net-adds for the period, and giving the strongest indication yet that 3G is finally gaining momentum, according to just-published figures from Informa Telecoms & Media.
During the next five years, suppliers that sell semiconductor components to the cellular base station market are likely to see their revenues slightly shrink, after modest growth from 2005 to 2007, reports In-Stat. As a whole, demand for cellular voice and data is expected to grow briskly in the next few years, although that will not translate into higher revenues for chipmakers, believes the group.
For the first time since 2000-2001, worldwide unit shipments of digital cable TV settop boxes will grow for the second consecutive year, reports In-Stat. Sustained North American demand for advanced or 'high-end' digital cable settop boxes that include PVRs and/or high definition capability, coupled with modestly increasing demand in Asia, is fuelling the market growth. Demand for all types of digital cable set top boxes, especially in North America and China, is going to remain quite strong in 2006 and 2007, it said.
US businesses have moved beyond experimenting with IP solutions to incorporating them into the fabric of their voice and data network strategies. Many businesses have realised tangible benefits from IP deployments and are increasingly expanding them. This is according to the findings in In-Stat's new 'Voice and Networking Trends 2005' survey.
The Nanoethics Group has announced the appointment of a distinguished list of members to its Advisory Board, as public interest grows concerning nanotechnology's impact on ethics and society. The group is an independent research organisation formed to study nanotechnology's impact on society and related ethical issues. Nanoethics is the study of moral and societal issues arising from nanotechnology, such as those related to environmental safety, privacy, human enhancement, longevity, terrorism, and more.
The Open Base Station Architecture Initiative, (OBSAI) which was first launched in 2002 with only three members, now has a membership of 130. OBSAI is a comprehensive set of open internal interface specifications for base station architecture and module specifications covering the areas of transport, control, base band and radio. First version specifications can be downloaded from the public web site at www.obsai.org.
A four-year study of brain cancer patients in the UK has found that there is no increased risk of getting cancer that could be attributed to the use of mobile phones. The study of 966 brain cancer patients was conducted by London's Institute of Cancer Research and three major British universities. The results were released in a report in the British Medical Journal.
IPC, the interconnect and packaging industry trade association, has created a program to aid the electronics assembly industry in its drive to lead-free implementation for compliance with European Union regulations. The IPC Certification for RoHS Lead-Free Electronics Assembly Process Capability Program is an in-depth audit program designed to examine electronics manufacturing services (EMS) companies and original equipment manufacturers (OEM) to ensure that facilities are capable of producing product to meet the lead-free requirements of the EU's Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive.
A group of experts has urged Europe's leaders to take radical action on research and innovation 'before it is too late'. In a report submitted to the European Commission, the independent Expert Group has called for a 'Pact for Research and Innovation' to be signed by political, business and social leaders to show their commitment to creating an Innovative Europe. The Expert Group is a 4-person group chaired by the former Prime Minister of Finland, Esko Aho. The experts state that current trends are unsustainable in the face of global competition, therefore a new vision is needed to address a series of productivity and social challenges faced by Europe.
Technology
Broadcom has launched wireless local area network (WLAN) chipsets to comply with the next-generation IEEE 802.11n specification. Designated Intensi-fi, the chips are designed to deliver high performance and robust wireless connectivity, enabling next generation Wi-Fi devices to support emerging voice, video and data applications. The 802.11n draft specification has very recently been passed by the IEEE Task Group N.
Sirific Wireless claims its SW3200 transceiver, shown at 3GSM, handles more functions on-chip than its rivals. The company says it embeds all high-speed downlink packet access, wideband CDMA and wideband Edge/GPRS transceiver functions for third-generation handsets in one 7 x 7 mm package. The SW3200 transceiver handles five bands of HSDPA and W-CDMA, up to the 10,2 Mbps of HSDPA's Category 9. The chip supports four bands of GSM and Edge, including E-GPRS Class 12.
The TWC 1150 is a GSM camera wristwatch phone manufactured by Telson of South Korea, which débuted in India recently. The unit supports an infrared wireless earpiece, a 256-colour STN LCD, photo caller ID, speaker phone, stopwatch, 16 polyphonic ring tones, voice recording and voice recognition. The plug-in camera supports 330 000-pixel resolution. It weighs 98 g.
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