Southern Africa
Sourcecom, a South African BEE network solutions and systems integration specialist, has received the Gold Partner of the Year award from 3Com for the financial year ending in May 2006. 3Com, a major vendor of network equipment, presented Sourcecom with the honour on the basis of sales resulting from major, public-sector contracts.
The Swaziland Television Authority (Swazi TV) has invested R15,5m in technology from Spescom Media IT. According to Sean du Toit, general manager of Spescom Media IT, Swazi TV purchased the latest Avid Newsroom production system and Sony XDCAM to upgrade its current analog news production system.
The CSIR has announced that it has adopted the open document format (ODF) in support of access to information and as an enabler of the adoption of open source software (OSS). In terms of the adoption of the standard, CSIR word processor, spreadsheet and presentation files will be in ODF, wherever possible. ODF allows anyone to use the tool of their choice to open, view, change, edit and store data. It also allows free exchange of information, irrespective of the software used and it is an ISO standard controlled by the non-profit Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards.
Midrand-based Tshwelopele Engineering (TE), a leading protection, measurements and control systems company serving the South African electricity supply industry, has diversified its operations by setting up a new company specialising in IT-based systems. TE, a black-owned and predominantly black-managed and staffed company, has established itself over the past eight years as one of the country's top suppliers of voltage regulators, surge arresters and auto-reclosers. The new business, Tswelopele Solutions (TS), is the local distributor for the Austria-based suppliers of automated mass access control and ticketing systems SkiData and Smartmachine respectively. The company recently set up headquarters at the Innovation Hub in Pretoria.
Overseas
Business
Full year sales for Royal Philips Electronics grew by 4,6% to 26,98 bn Euro. Earnings before interest and tax fell by 19,6% to 1,183 bn Euro. The decline was attributed mainly to a one-time asbestos-related charge, it said. Net income rose by 87,7% to 5,38 bn Euro, including a 4,28 bn Euro net gain on the sale of its semiconductor business.
FPGA specialist Xilinx announced net revenues of $450,7m in its third quarter, down 4% sequentially from the prior quarter and flat with the same quarter a year ago. Third quarter net income of $87,5m decreased 6% from the prior quarter, and included stock-based compensation of $21,4m.
Linear Technology announced that revenue for its quarterly period ended 31 December, was $267m, an increase of 1% over revenue of $265m for the second quarter of the prior fiscal year. Net income for the second quarter of fiscal year 2007 was $105m.
IBM reported a 7% increase in fourth quarter revenue to $26,3 bn, while net income from continuing operations was $3,5 bn, an increase of 8% over the fourth quarter of 2005, it said.
Companies
CSR of Cambridge, is acquiring the GPS technology companies, NordNav Technologies for an initial $40m, and Cambridge Positioning Systems for $35m. The acquisitions will allow CSR to provide software-based low-cost GPS suitable for mass-market mobile phones and PNDs (personal navigation devices). CSR says it will apply its own experience in embedding radio technologies into the mobile platform and expects its first autonomous and assisted GPS product offerings that support satellite navigation and other location-based services to be available during the first half of this year, with cost expected to subsequently reduce to less than $1.
Powerchip Semiconductor and Renesas Technology have announced they intend to form a joint venture for the design of memory products. The new company - to be called Vantel and based in Tokyo - will focus on embedded memory for system-in-package (SiP) products that ultimately will go into consumer and communication system designs from Renesas.
The Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group intend to combine to form The Linux Foundation in an effort to promote the business adoption of Linux. Key backers of The Linux Foundation include Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Novell, and Oracle. Other members include Fujitsu, Hitachi and NEC.
Freescale Semiconductor has announced that it will join the IBM technology alliance for joint semiconductor research and development. The agreement includes CMOS and silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technologies as well as advanced semiconductor research and design enablement transitioning at the 45-nm generation.
Polymer Vision has announced it is cooperating with Innos to establish the world's first production facility for organic semiconductor-based rollable displays in Southampton, UK. Polymer Vision's rollable display technology enables mobile devices to incorporate a display that is larger than the device itself.
The IEEE 802.3 has formed an energy-efficient Ethernet study group. Proponents estimate energy-efficient Ethernet could save $450m in energy costs a year in the US alone.
Industry
Surplus semiconductor inventories rose again in the fourth quarter of 2006, meaning that excess stockpiles are likely to linger through 2007, according to iSuppli. Total excess chip inventory swelled to $4,3 bn in the fourth quarter, up 4,9% from $4,1 bn at the end of Q3. Indications of rising inventory come amid signs of the start of a seasonal slowdown for the semiconductor market and the larger electronics industry, it says.
Fabless IC suppliers secured 20% of worldwide IC sales in 2006, more than twice the total fabless revenue share they had in 2000, according to a report released by market research analyst IC Insights.
Mobile phone shipments grew by 25% year-on-year to reach an all-time record total of one billion handsets in 2006, according to Strategy Analytics. Around 300 million cellular handsets were shipped worldwide in Q4 2006, up a healthy 22% year-on-year. Nokia and Motorola continued to dominate volumes, with Sony Ericsson coming in third.
The EDA Consortium's Market Statistics Service (MSS) has announced that the electronic design automation (EDA) industry revenue for Q3 of 2006 grew to $1309m compared with $1122m in Q3 2005. It said this increase reflects both the continuing growth of the industry as a whole and the growth of the MSS programme, which enjoyed a net increase in the number of participating companies compared with the same quarter last year. The MSS average annual growth rate comparing the most recent four quarters to the same four quarters in the prior year was 12%.
The cost of manufacturing each 4 GB version of Apple's iPhone is estimated by market analyst group iSuppli to be about $230. This means each phone sold could generate a 50,7% gross margin, it reckons.
The PCI Special Interest Group has announced that it has completed work on the base spec for PCI Express 2.0, doubling serial signalling rates on the interconnect from 2,5 to 5 GHz. The key benefit of PCIe 2.0 is its faster signalling, effectively increasing the aggregate bandwidth of a 16-lane link to approximately 16 GB/s. This higher bandwidth will allow product designers to implement narrower interconnect links to achieve high performance while reducing cost. The working group also added several new protocol layer improvements.
Apple has announced that it sold 1,6 million Macs in the quarter ending 31 December, to end the year almost 30% up from the year prior, easily outpacing US and global PC growth rates.
The MEMS Industry Group (MIG), the trade association representing the microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and microstructures industries, predicts that 2006 will be marked as 'the year in which MEMS made significant inroads into the consumer electronics market'. Specifically, in applications such as accelerometer-based motion sensing in remote consoles for gaming; integrated dual-axis gyroscopes for image stabilisation in mobile phones and digital still cameras; silicon microphones into acoustic modules; and silicon resonators enabling multiple timing applications, such as quartz replacement in watches. Once measured in the hundreds, MEMS devices are being measured in the hundreds of thousands and are being sold by the millions. It expects the MEMS market to double from $5 bn to nearly $10 bn in the next six years.
The Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) Working Group, the organisation dedicated to simplifying integration of NAND Flash memory into consumer electronics devices, computing platforms and industrial systems, has announced the availability of the ONFI 1.0 specification (http://onfi.org/specification.asp). The chip-level standard interface simplifies Flash controller design, which facilitates the integration of a wide range of NAND Flash components into diverse end-use applications. This open standard defines NAND device behaviour, command and register sets, pin-out, electrical parameters and packaging and provides a mechanism for NAND devices to identify themselves to a system.
Energy costs represent the third most significant operating expense item for cellular carriers, according to ABI Research. With mobile broadband added to the equation, the analyst group reckons that the energy required per subscriber will push per-subscriber energy costs past acceptable barriers - unless carriers move to an integrated WiMAX and Metro Wi-Fi solution. From a pure coverage perspective, ABI notes that WiMAX is twice as energy-cost-effective and metro Wi-Fi is 50 times more energy-cost-effective than WCDMA. WiMAX can accommodate 11 times today's average data consumption and still be more energy-cost-efficient compared to WCDMA or HSDPA, it says.
US cellphone maker Motorola has announced 3500 job cuts after reporting a sharp fall in fourth-quarter earnings. Motorola's net profit slumped 48% to $624m. The lay-offs amount to 5% of the firm's global workforce.
Kids in the US are becoming increasingly tech-savvy, playing video games and using and downloading content to cellphones, computers and portable digital music players, from as young as 2 years old, according to The NPD Group's new study, Kids and Digital Content. While downloading games is the most prevalent activity, watching downloaded movies, television, music videos or online video streaming has already reached upwards of 25% penetration with children ages 2 through 14. When it comes to downloading digital content, by 7, more than one in 10 are downloading content in some form, with 22% downloading at age 10 and 50% downloading at age 14.
Hewlett-Packard has announced that it plans to open a laboratory in St. Petersburg, Russia, to pursue advanced information management technologies.
Given Imaging has received approval to lead a European Union collaborative research project to develop an integrated imaging-biosensing system to screen for cancer of the gastrointestinal tract. The project, 'Nano-based capsule-endoscopy with molecular imaging and optical biopsy', (NEMO) kicked off in Tel-Aviv at the end of November. The NEMO Group will invest 4,7m Euro over the next three years, of which the EC will contribute 2,8m Euro. According to the group it will combine optical technologies with nano-technologies, biosensing and manoeuvering technologies to create a unique PillCam capsule endoscope capable of secretion analysis and the detection of marked and deep tissue disorders.
Strategy Analytics' new automotive electronics service report predicts strong growth in the use of automotive intelligent battery sensors, spearheaded by European luxury brands such as BMW and Mercedes Benz. Intelligent battery sensors are used to monitor battery health, and can help avoid occasional problem situations where there is not enough charge to start a vehicle. Strategy Analytics says that intelligent battery sensing technology has a key role to play in improving vehicle reliability and it expects the market for these devices to exceed $180m by 2012.
Technology
Australian encryption developer Senetas and Swiss quantum photonics vendor, ID Quantique, have announced the completion of development work on a hybrid encryption technology using quantum cryptography. According to Senetas, the joint development effort began with the objective of developing a quantum key distribution system for the generation and secure exchange of crypto keys over fibre-optic networks using its Layer-2 encryption technology for security at data rates of up to 10 Gbps. Quantum cryptography employs individual photon polarisation to represent 1s and 0s in such a way that intrusions can be detected.
Spansion is rolling out its new four-bit-per-cell MirrorBit flash memory with densities ranging from 256 Mbit to 2 Gbit. The first batch of MirrorBit Quad chips will use a 90 nm process and will be drop-in compatible with other industry-standard NAND products, according to the company. Spansion's MirrorBit Quad uses four levels of charge in each of the two physical bit locations within the cell.
Wolfson Microelectronics has introduced a new audio codec with a dual-mode speaker driver, offering the flexibility to switch between class AB and class D operation. The WM8991 codec has a 98 dB signal-to-noise ratio performance, according to the company. The WM8991 supports the signal switching, audio conversion and voice mixing requirements for next-generation mobile phones. The ability to select class A/B or class D operation is said to be an industry first.
HP has announced research that could lead to the creation of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) up to eight times denser - while using less energy for a given computation. It reckons that such chips could be built using the same-sized transistors as those used in today's FPGA design, meaning they could be built in current fabs with only minor modifications. HP calls its technology ''field programmable nanowire interconnect' (FPNI) - a variation on current FPGA technology. It calls for a nanoscale crossbar switch structure to be layered on top of conventional CMOS process. In this approach, all logic operations are performed in the CMOS, whereas most of the signal routing in the circuit is handled by a crossbar that sits above the transistor layer.
Yet another wireless networking protocol - RuBee, also known as IEEE 1902.1 - is emerging as a standard and is expected to give retailers and manufacturers an alternative to RFID for many applications. The RuBee protocol is said to function better in 'harsh environments' with networks of many thousands of tags - for example to read and write data near steel or water - and around corners. RuBee is a bidirectional, on-demand, peer-to-peer radiating transceiver protocol operating at frequencies below 450 kHz and optimally at 132 kHz. One of the advantages for the use of long-wavelength frequencies is that the tags can be low in cost, very thin, and fully programmable with 4 bit processors.
The British are following traditional Egyptian rituals and enclosing 21st century treasures, including mobile phones, jewellery and photos in the coffin when a loved one passes away. According to a customer survey by the UK's Dial-aPhone, more than one in five people would like to be buried with their mobile phones. The reason? So they can still receive texts from friends and loved ones. Other reasons given included fear of being buried alive and not wanting others to see personal messages and pictures stored on their phones.
The Pentagon is readying an anti-personnel weapon it calls the 'active denial system', which is a ray gun designed to heat the skin's surface, invoking an involuntary 'flee' response. It uses a new concentrated source of energy, a gyrotron energy beam of high frequency and high energy concentration, which, combined with its microwave nature results in unique properties, eg, ultra-rapid volumetric heating of non-metallic materials, and ultra-rapid selective heating. The DoD's current demonstration platform mounts all hardware inside a Humvee retrofitted with an electric motor. An actual gyrotron is a high-powered electron tube that accelerates electrons via cyclotron motion caused by a magnetic field generated by a superconducting magnet.
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