Southern Africa
Powertech, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Altron, recently announced that an agreement has been concluded to acquire the 25% minority shareholder interest held by operating management in Cables de Comunicaciones Zaragoza, Powertech's cable manufacturing subsidiary in Zaragoza, Spain. Cables de Comunicaciones is a manufacturer of copper telecommunications, instrumentation and railway signalling cables serving the Spanish and European markets with an annual turnover in excess of 70 million Euros and some 233 employees. Powertech will purchase the 25% shareholding from management for an amount of 8556 million Euros.
VIA Technologies' Embedded Platform Division has appointed Centurion Micro Electronics as its new distributor for the South African region.
Tellumat has been awarded a contract by Armscor, to supply point-to-point digital microwave radio links in an upgrade and expansion to the national command and control network of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF).
The latest ADEC (Association for Distributors and Manufacturers of Electronics Components) exhibition has been hailed as a success by exhibitors and visitors alike. The one-day event, which took place at Durban's ICC on 25 July, showcased technology-leading products and solutions across the electronic components and production equipment spectrum.
Overseas
Business
RF Micro Devices has announced a major expansion at its facility in Beijing, China. The expansion, which includes increased assembly capacity and the addition of new advanced capabilities, is expected to support the company's Polaris3 RF solution, which is scheduled to ramp production in the current quarter. The increased capacity will approximately double assembly capabilities related to RFMD's transmit modules. Capacity of wire bond and test capabilities will be expanded in the current quarter, and full capacity will be available by November 2007.
Philips Lighting has reported sales of 1464 billion Euros for the second quarter of 2007, up 6% from 1296 billion Euros in the same period last year. The company reported strong growth in energy-efficient lighting solutions, particularly in Europe and Asia. Earnings before interest, tax and amortisation grew from 49 million Euros to 61 million Euros.
Infineon has reported revenues (excluding its Qimonda business) of 1,01 billion Euros for the quarter ended 30 June 2007. Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) were 13 million Euros, up from negative 28 million Euros in the previous quarter; this included charges for restructuring, largely offset by a gain from the sale of a business. Including Qimonda, the Infineon group posted revenues of 1,75 billion Euros, a net loss of 197 million Euros, and EBIT of negative 280 million Euros for the latest quarter.
Epcos has reported sales for the quarter ended 30 June 2007 of 364 million Euros, up 10% year on year but unchanged sequentially. Earnings before interest and taxes was 21 million Euros compared to 20 million Euros in the previous quarter and 15 million Euros for the same period last year.
IBM has laid off 450 workers at its US computer chip manufacturing facilities. These layoffs are said to be the result of redundancies created when the company recently merged the technology and manufacturing parts of its chip making business into a single operating unit.
Osram has announced that it will cease production of OLED-based displays by the end of 2007 and close its fabrication plant in Malaysia. Instead, the company has said it will focus its OLED activities on developing market-ready lighting solutions.
Texas Instruments saw its latest quarter's profit from continuing operations fall to $614 million, or 42 cents per share from $739 million, or 47 cents per share a year ago. Revenue fell to $3,42 billion from $3,7 billion.
STMicroelectronics reported a net loss of $758 million, or 84 cents per share, in the three months ended 30 June, compared with net income of $168 million, or 18 cents per share, in the second quarter of 2006. This is primarily the result of a $906 million charge related to impairment and restructuring costs. The charges pushed the company into an operating loss of $772 million for the quarter, compared with operating income of $169 million in the second quarter of 2006.
Companies
Seiko Instruments, the leading vendor of RF data communication cards in Japan, has selected the SMARTi 3G single-chip CMOS radio frequency (RF) transceiver developed by Infineon, for UMTS/HSDPA data card applications, to enable laptop and PDA users to connect to the Internet via the cellular network and enjoy download speeds of up to 3,6 Mbps.
Seoul Semiconductor has signed European and Asian distribution agreements with Avnet Electronics Marketing, a division of Avnet, to expand and reinforce its sales network. The agreements followed an announcement the companies made in January for Avnet to distribute Seoul Semiconductor's products in the North American market.
Samsung shut down six of its chip production lines after a power cut at a plant near Seoul recently. This could cause the current shortage of NAND flash parts to linger and possibly boost prices. Shares of fellow flash memory chip makers Sandisk and Micron rose on the back of this news.
Industry
Third-party very large-scale integration (VLSI) design service providers continue to experience increased opportunities as original equipment manufacturers streamline their processes to save costs. The low-cost Asia Pacific region accounted for more than 60% of design work in 2006 and expects continued growth as service providers in this region offer quality designs at low costs. New analysis from Frost & Sullivan reveals that the worldwide VLSI design services market earned revenues of $2,19 million in 2006 and estimates this to more than double to reach $4,56 million in 2010.
The market for timing devices is estimated at $1,6 billion, and growing by close to 13% on average each year, according to Databeans. Demand for these integrated circuits is outpacing traditional crystal-type products due to competitive pricing, and the ability to integrate timing with other functions, particularly in the consumer space.
What is driving this demand is the inclusion of timing products in application areas that did not use them before. Crystal oscillators are still the most popular solution in low cost applications; however, the silicon solutions are gaining ground. The products are simply integrated, easier to mass produce, and offer higher performance, especially for applications in which the elimination of noise is critical - such as in telecommunications. For these applications, the low jitter characteristic of the silicon solutions is a key differentiator.
A new report from NanoMarkets predicts that the market for printed and organic lighting will exceed $2,9 billion by 2012. The report claims that the higher energy efficiencies and ability to create novel lighting products provided by OLED and carbon nanotubes in particular will push the entire printed and organic lighting market up to $5,9 billion by 2014. Most of the new business is expected to come from the backlighting, general illumination and architectural/specialty industrial lighting applications with significant opportunities also in vehicular lighting, signage and a variety of niche markets.
The electronic design automation (EDA) industry revenue for the first quarter grew 10% to $1,345 billion, versus $1,223 billion in the like period a year ago, according to the EDA Consortium. The four-quarter average growth rate, which compares the most recent four quarters to the same four quarters in the prior year, was 15%. Companies that were tracked employed 25 820 professionals in Q1 2007, up 11% from the 23 324 in Q1 2006.
According to the market tracker DRAMeXchange, the commodity DRAM market fell by nearly 25% in the second quarter of 2007. This huge decline was blamed on the massive 40% cut in the average selling prices of DDR 512 Mbit parts. Virtually all memory makers saw sales fall by between 11% and 47%, while Samsung managed to strengthen its market lead during the quarter.
According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, worldwide sales of semiconductors grew 2% from the $118,4 billion during the first half of 2006 to $121 billion in the first half of 2007. Second-quarter sales of $59,9 billion were 2% down from the $61,1 billion reported in the first quarter of 2007. Sales in June 2007 were $20 billion, a decline of 1,7% from the $20,3 billion reported in May.
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan finds that the world electronics manufacturing service (EMS) market earned revenues of $190,00 billion in 2006 and estimates this to reach $387,42 billion in 2013. Additionally, the world original design manufacturers (ODM) market earned revenues of $100,65 billion in 2006 and this is estimated to reach $219,00 billion in 2013. This comes as the EMS market continues to evolve as providers and ODMs diversify and seek new markets. Current market dynamics point to further outsourcing by the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and as a result, both EMS providers and ODMs will enjoy steady growth over the coming years. Compared to the EMS market, ODMs have witnessed higher growth over the last five years.
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