Southern Africa
Alcatel recently launched its Accredited Training centre in Midrand. The centre complies with the Alcatel University accreditation requirements and will provide training on the latest enterprise solutions (voice and data), and help developing channel partners and other industry actors' skills, especially for disadvantaged people, said Alcatel. The centre will make a significant contribution to Alcatel's commitment to its black economic empowerment program as it recruits, trains and accredits BEE Channel Partners to distribute, install and maintain Alcatel's enterprise solutions. The partners can either be direct or indirect depending on the level of accreditation achieved and this is meant to give an assurance to the end user in terms of quality of service provided.
The Development Bank of Southern Africa, the Department of Provincial and Local Government, the South African Local Government Association and LGSETA will be rolling out the second phase of an ICT skills training programme for municipalities in all nine provinces. This training programme, Local Government Network (LGNET), is intended to equip municipal employees with basic IT skills so that they can effectively utilise the virtual private network which links local government and its stakeholders as an e-community, as well as to an online local government resource centre.
Test equipment supplier Coral-I Solutions has announced that it has sold off 30% of its equity to a black empowerment partner led by Andile Tlhoaele. Tlhoaele, who is currently the president of the Communications Cabling Association of South Africa (CCASA), will join the board of Coral-I as a director and will be actively involved in the day-to-day running of the company.
Speaking at the recent Electronic Waste Management conference at the CSIR International Convention Centre in Pretoria, Allan Werth, CEO of African Sky, said that failure to comply with legislative requirements surrounding the secure disposal of electronic waste (e-waste) puts companies at high risk. "South Africa's e-waste volumes are increasing exponentially, as they have in the rest of the world. Legislation, both internationally and in South Africa, holds organisations accountable for the damage they inflict on the environment, and the penalties can run into millions of rands." African Sky is a South African specialist e-waste solution company and holds local and international accreditation to meet the full spectrum of e-waste requirements. See ‘Ignorance of e-waste puts corporates at high risk’.
Webb Industries, local agent for Dekolink Wireless, a leading manufacturer of high-quality RF coverage solutions for GSM and wireless networks, has won a contract to supply UMTS repeaters to MTN South Africa. The contract involves the supply and installation of Dekolink UMTS repeaters for in-building solutions. See ‘MTN chooses Webb technology’.
Kikiza, a BEE subsidiary of Comtest, has concluded an agreement to represent Tejas Networks in southern Africa. Tejas Networks is an Indian telecommunication company that offers a full portfolio of next-generation SDH/SONET equipment. See ‘Tejas Networks now represented in SA’.
Overseas
Business
Demand for power-management products helped boost International Rectifier's sales and profits for its first fiscal quarter. The company reported profits of $37,8 m on sales of $344,2 m. That compares with adjusted earnings of $33,8 m for the June quarter on revenue of $322,7 m. For same period a year ago, earnings were $29,4 m on revenue of $272,6 m.
Renesas Technology has returned to profitability in the first half of its fiscal year after reporting two consecutive losses in its fiscal 2005. For Q1 Renesas posted sales of $4,05 bn, up 8,5% from the same period last year. Operating profit totalled $119m and net profits of $51m, compared to a $17m loss the year before.
Companies
Nvidia, a supplier of graphics chips, has signed a deal to acquire PortalPlayer, a supplier of audio datastream processors, for $357m cash. PortalPlayer is a past supplier of audio processors for Apple's iPod MP3 player.
Motorola has offered $208m in cash for all outstanding shares of Netopia, a specialist in DSL modems and residential gateways. The acquisition will give Motorola a stronger presence in home and small-business access equipment.
Applied Materials is acquiring the assets of Brooks Software, a division of Brooks Automation, for $125m in cash. Brooks Software is a provider of factory management and control software to the semiconductor and flat panel display industries.
German DRAM maker Qimonda has divested its stake in Ramtron International, a supplier of ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM) and other chip products. Qimonda is a spin-off from Infineon Technologies.
ST Microelectronics is teaming up with Taiwanese company Delta Electronics, and its subsidiary, DelSolar, in the development of solar power technologies. The companies will initially explore cooperation opportunities in areas such as increasing solar cell production and developing photovoltaic inverter and power supply applications.
Luxtera has been awarded a contract from DARPA's Electronic and Photonic Integrated Circuits (EPIC) programme to continue its development of 40 Gbps photonic transceivers. Part two of the original contract, the research will now look into full integration of lasers on a CMOS chip.
Texas Instruments and Mips Technologies have announced a licensing deal under which TI has licensed the Mips' MIPS32 24Kc processor core for its new voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) chip lines. TI's TNETV1051/1052/1053 devices are dual-core communications processors based on a 300 MHz MIPS32 24Kc core and TI's 150 MHz C55x DSP.
Microelectromechanical system (MEMS) startup Discera will be working with quartz crystal oscillator maker Vectron International to develop MEMS oscillators. Discera will supply the MEMS resonator while Vectron adds an ASIC containing a phase-locked loop (PLL) and conditioning circuitry. The Vectron-Discera alliance will expand MEMS oscillators from quartz crystal compatibility to new product areas such as frequency control, smart sensors, filters and hybrid solutions for commercial, military and space applications said the companies.
Industry
Forward Concepts has lowered its forecast for DSP revenues for 2006, blaming a severe drop in quarterly prices for digital signal processors (DSP) used in mobile phones. Forward Concepts now says DSP revenues for the year are likely to be about $8,4 bn, 10 to 15% below its original estimates.
Strategy Analytics' latest RF Component Industry Review report notes that the financial performance reported by RF component suppliers in the first quarter has improved. Demand for RF components in the first quarter remained strong, supported by strength in the cellphone market, it says, and 53% of the top RF component suppliers covered reported significant profits, while the number of suppliers reporting net losses remained relatively low, by recent historical standards.
Early business cases from the WiMAX community show attractive financial returns in a variety of deployment environments, but with modelling more realistic assumptions there may be very few situations in which WiMAX has a secure long-term business case, according to a new report published by Analysis. WiMAX operators and investors need to select their targets with extreme care, it says. Small returns in many situations, from low ARPU or take-up, make high up-front investments in network infrastructure, marketing and customer premises equipment highly risky, it notes. Although emerging countries have low penetration of fixed network infrastructure and services, the report points out that low disposable incomes, low penetration of PCs and the growing strength of cellular services will limit the return.
In Strategy Analytics' latest reports on the WiMAX and WLAN markets, the research group forecasts that GaAs device demand from these two applications will show significant growth, with overall demand approaching $1 bn by 2010, second only to demand from the cellular handset market. While the WiMAX market will remain in the early stages, GaAs semiconductors will dominate specific functions in the RF module and demand will grow at a CAAGR of 69%. The WLAN market continues to ramp and is moving to higher frequencies and multimode and multiband architectures that play to the advantages of linearity, efficiency and high frequency capabilities offered by GaAs, it notes.
The International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (iNEMI) has organised the 'SnPb BGA Availability Task Group' to address the needs of OEMs that are taking the lead (Pb) exemption from, or whose products are out of scope of, the RoHS Directive. The task group will focus its efforts on ways to work with the BGA suppliers (ICs as well as packaging firms) to support SnPb-compatible BGAs, assist with questions of long-term reliability, and develop other solutions to address concerns.
The IEEE is working on revising its laptop battery standard to improve performance and safety. This follows the series of recent laptop battery recalls. The revision is expected to be completed in 18 months.
Power.org, the open community developing standards and applications around IBM's Power Architecture, has made available a merged instruction set architecture-Power ISA Version 2.03 and the Power Architecture Platform Requirements (PAPR) specification. The organisation also released a consolidated roadmap for processors built on Power Architecture technology. This includes products and cores from Applied Micro Circuits, Freescale, IBM, Rapport and Synopsys.
As the accelerating video market extends its reach to products such as cellphones, portable media players and automotive infotainment systems, consumers are demanding easy access to their video content throughout the home and on the go. According to Texas Instruments, transcoding is crucial to addressing the challenge of seamlessly moving multiformat video content between all types of video devices. Transcoding is the ability to take existing video content and change the format, bit rate and/or resolution in order to view it on another video device. Transcoding a single video format is possible today, but not in a format that will meet consumers' needs to easily navigate the changing video environment. According to Texas Instruments, the ability to view content on any device requires the need to transcode many video formats, making multiformat transcoding crucial. For more on this see www.ti.com/transcoding.
Bourne Research, a market research firm that tracks emerging technologies, has revealed its list of the 10 'coolest consumer products of 2006', featuring just a few of the 'must have' items that use the latest in MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) and nanotechnology. See http://bournereport.podOmatic.com.
Technology
Freescale Semiconductor has announced that it reached a milestone with the shipment of more than 300 million accelerometers.
Microchip Technology has announced three new offerings for IEEE 802.15.4 wireless networking: its first RF transceiver, the MRF24J40, is a 2,4 GHz IEEE 802.15.4 transceiver targeted for the ZigBee protocol; the ZENA wireless network analyser tool, which enables development of ZigBee protocol systems using Microchip parts; and the MiWi protocol, a free, small-footprint protocol developed by Microchip for customers who do not need ZigBee protocol interoperability but want to use IEEE 802.15.4 transceivers in low-cost peer-to-peer, star and mesh networks.
Texas Instruments, in collaboration with Xilinx, Lyrtech, and other third parties, have unveiled its small form factor software defined radio (SDR) development platform, which provides a full signal chain from antenna to baseband processing. The kit can be used to create single- or multiprotocol handset radios for military, public safety, and commercial applications as well as RFID readers. The SDR Development Platform provides digital baseband, IF, and RF modules. The baseband module features a Xilinx Virtex-4 SX35 FPGA and a TI TMS320DM6446 chip. The TI chip contains a TMS320CC64x+ digital signal processor (DSP) core and an ARM9 general-purpose processor core.
Freescale Semiconductor has launched a major licensing programme for its 32-bit ColdFire microcontroller technology in the embedded space. Different from other intellectual-property providers that license their IP to both chip makers and systems houses but do not sell chips, Freescale will sell the ColdFire technology under its own brand and license it to OEMs.
Shimei Semiconductor has developed a blue LED grown on a silicon wafer. Using silicon as a substrate for GaN epitaxy could lower the cost significantly, simplify LED structure, extend the lifetime and enable the integration of an optical device in CMOS circuits, according to the company. The prototype LED emits 10 mW of 450 nm wavelength blue light.
A new OLED (organic light-emitting diode) based 'light bandage' could revolutionise the treatment of skin cancer, according to researchers at the University of St Andrews and Ninewells Hospital, in the UK, who developed the product. The new device builds on established photodynamic therapy treatment (PDT) methods, which is a two-step process involving the application of a photosensitive drug followed by controlled exposure to a selective light source which activates the drug and destroys the diseased cells. While conventional PDT involves large, cumbersome and intense light sources, where the patient is required to be immobile for several hours, the light-emitting patch is said to be a low-cost, portable and convenient method of treatment.
Dust Networks has announced the world's first system-on-chip IC for wireless sensor networks. Called 'mote-on-chip' (MoC) it uses time synchronized mesh protocol (TSMP) and integrates all the hardware and software functions for creating distributed sensor networks onto a single chip. According to Dust Networks it uses 80% less power than ZigBee and it eliminates the need for wired routers. The first MoC-based motes and managers come in standards-based IEEE 802.15.4 compliant, 2,4 GHz and narrow-band 900 MHz versions. They require no external components and no embedded programming, enabling OEMs to reduce the development time and cost for wireless sensor networking solutions.
General Motors is introducing a full-featured remote-control key fob for some of its vehicles that will allow drivers to not only determine the pressure in each tyre, but also check the odometer reading, see if there is enough fuel in the tank, change the radio station settings, lock/unlock the car doors, to name a few. GM says it will be the first to offer remote two-way communication with the vehicle using an LCD on the fob.
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