South Africa
The Altron group has posted strong results for the six months ended 31 August 2008, notwithstanding the high base established in the first six months of last year. Revenue has increased by 19% to R13,2 billion and operating profit by 25% to R1,1 billion. Headline earnings per share grew by 12%, while adjusted headline earnings per share increased by 15% – removing the effect of the amortisation of intangibles arising from the group’s recent acquisitions. While Altech performed very strongly, Powertech maintained its margin at 10,1% and Bytes dragged the group’s financial performance down somewhat.
Tactile Technologies has supplied an initial batch of MediaTile digital-signs-in-a-box to Eskom. This forms part of Eskom’s initiative to improve its internal communications systems and move toward a paperless office environment. The MediaTiles are electronic units that display remote broadcasts sent over the 3G cellular network.
Overseas
Business
As part of its recently announced global restructuring and cost reduction programme, Qimonda is cutting around 3000 jobs and reducing its R&D and administrative expenses. It expects this restructuring to result in approximately 450 million Euros of annualised cost savings once it has been fully implemented, although the company will incur an estimated 50 million Euro restructuring charge. Qimonda is also ramping down manufacturing at its 200 mm facility in Richmond, USA, at which point the company’s exit from 200 mm production will be complete.
LG Electronics is converting its A1 plasma panel manufacturing line in Korea, into a solar cell production line. In addition, it plans to invest 220 billion South-Korean Won by 2010 to establish two production lines. The company expects that the first line will begin mass production in the first quarter of 2010, with the second line beginning full operations a year later. Both lines will manufacture crystalline silicon solar cells and modules with a capacity of 120 MW each.
Altium has reported financial results for its first fiscal quarter of 2009 ending 30 September 2008. Sales were $12,19 million, an increase of 28% over the previous corresponding period, while revenue was up 22% to $12,63 million. Software licence revenue of $7,52 million represented an increase of 22% over the same period last year, and maintenance/software assurance contract revenue of increased by 33% to $4,30 million.
Actel has announced a 10% reduction in its workforce, equating to approximately 60 positions being eliminated. Together with other cost-saving measures to be initiated during the fourth quarter of 2008, the company anticipates that the reduction in force will decrease quarterly operating expenses by approximately $2,5 million. Operating results for the fourth quarter of 2008 will be adversely affected by accounting charges related to the reduction in force, which the company currently estimates will be about $3 million.
Cypress Semiconductor announced that consolidated revenue for the 2008 third quarter was $600,2 million, up 1,3% from $592,3 million for the prior quarter, and up 33,5% from $449,5 million for the year-ago period. However, the company recorded a GAAP net loss of $23,6 million in the latest quarter, or a diluted loss per share of $0,16. The previous quarter’s diluted earnings per share were $0,14 and were $0,18 in the year-ago third quarter.
Altera has announced third quarter sales of $356,8 million, down 1% from the second quarter of 2008 and up 13% from the third quarter of 2007. Net income was $94,7 million or $0,31 per diluted share, down from net income of $98,0 million or $0,32 per diluted share, in the second quarter of 2008. Third quarter net income was up 37% and earnings per diluted share were up 58% compared with the third quarter of 2007. The company’s board of directors has declared a quarterly dividend of $0,05 per share payable on 1 December 2008 to shareholders of record on 10 November 2008.
Companies
Building on their successful partnership on joint process technology development, Panasonic and Renesas are now collaborating on the development of elemental process technologies for SoCs of the next-generation 32 nm node. The two companies are confident that their 32 nm node transistor technology and other advances can soon be applied to products in mass production. It is anticipated that SoCs at the 32-nm node will deliver lower cost and improved performance enabled by miniaturisation of their design rules, yet there are many technical issues that need to be solved. In particular, it is necessary to introduce new materials and develop new technologies to break through barriers to further integration, such as transistor gate leakage and inconsistent electrical characteristic problems, which are often found in existing technologies.
Elpida Memory and Numonyx have formally signed a foundry agreement for Numonyx to utilise Elpida’s leading-edge 300 mm wafer facility in Hiroshima to manufacture NOR Flash memory. The formal signing finalises the letter of intent first made in July of this year. The agreement will enable Numonyx to increase production while reducing the costs to make high-density NOR Flash commonly used in mobile phones and embedded applications. The companies have begun technology transfer and development activities and are planning initial production in the middle of next year.
After an initial, rebuked offer by Vishay to acquire International Rectifier (IR), and a subsequent failed attempt by Vishay to effect a hostile takeover by tendering an offer directly to IR shareholders, Vishay has finally given up on the acquisition.
Freescale and Nivis, a developer and integrator of wireless network technologies, have announced plans to combine their respective technologies to provide a total wired-to-wireless platform for commercial and industrial sensor mesh networks. The combined hardware/software platform solution would include sensor interface, radio module, router/gateway, security manager and advanced network manager capabilities for emerging wireless standards in the industrial and commercial sector. The development platform is designed to provide developers with a rapid, cost-effective way to evaluate ISA100.11a, WirelessHART and 6LoWPAN stacks on Freescale MCUs and embedded processors, with software contributed by Nivis.
Microchip has acquired Hampshire Company, a player in the large-format (typically with screen diameters greater than 5 inches) touch screen controller market. Hampshire provides customers with high-quality universal touch screen controllers, along with application support and driver-interface software. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed, and the deal is expected to be immediately accretive to Microchip’s earnings.
Global carrier Deutsche Telekom has selected JDSU’s T-BERD/MTS-6000A multiservices application module to support the delivery of 10 GigE, SDH, OTN and Fibre Channel-based networks. The module is said to be the smallest 20 GigE field tester with advanced IPTV and triple-play test features.
Maxim has entered into an agreement to purchase Mobilygen, a privately held, fabless semiconductor company with leading technology in H.264 video compression. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close in the fourth calendar quarter of 2008. The acquisition will position Maxim to become a key supplier to the $2 billion video security semiconductor market.
Bourns has purchased substantially all of the assets of the transient blocking unit (TBU) business of Fultec Semiconductor. Fultec’s TBU business designs and manufactures surge protection components and modules primarily for communications applications. Effectively, the company’s products are resettable electronic fuses that react extremely quickly to incoming surges and effectively block energy from reaching electronic equipment. This product range should be a strong complement to Bourns’ existing resettable fuse product range. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Industry
The EDA Consortium has reported that the electronic design automation (EDA) industry revenue for Q2 2008 declined 3,7% to $1357,4 million, compared to $1408,8 million in Q2 2007. Solid year-over-year growth in the PCB/MCM and services segments were offset by declines in CAE, IC physical design and verification, and semiconductor IP. Geographically, Western Europe and Japan showed growth, but this was offset by declines in North America and the rest of the world. Companies that were tracked employed 28 004 professionals in Q2 2008, up 7% from the 26 164 employed in Q2 2007. EDA’s largest category, computer-aided engineering (CAE), generated revenue of $524,7 million in Q2 2008, representing a 2,6% decrease over the same period in 2007.
According to a new report from NanoMarkets, the OLED lighting market will reach almost $4,5 billion by 2013 and grow to $5,9 billion by 2015. The firm reports that in the past year the prospects for OLED lighting have made great leaps forward due to improvements in OLED performance and manufacturing. The unit costs of OLED lights are likely to remain higher than older general lighting technologies but the extra costs will be offset by improved OLED lifetimes and efficiencies. During 2008, OLED lifetimes improved from 24 000 hours to 100 000 hours. Meanwhile, the US Department of Energy now expects OLED lighting to reach 150 lm/W efficiency in 2012 rather than 2014 as previously forecast.
Texas Instruments has announced that its Bluetooth and WLAN technology software drivers are available for use in the Open Handset Alliance’s Android platform. Open access to these technologies simplifies the design process for handset manufacturers and software developers, providing the resources to architect cutting-edge Android-based devices. TI is the first company to provide open source Bluetooth and WLAN software drivers for the Android platform, and is among the first to open WLAN drivers for the mobile industry.
Technology
Researchers from Temple University in the US state of Philadelphia have developed a device that promises to improve any vehicle’s fuel consumption. The device uses a car’s battery power to subject its fuel injection system to an electric field, which lowers the viscosity of the fuel inside. The resulting smaller fuel droplets allow for more efficient combustion. Road tests have showed fuel efficiency gains of 20% in highway driving and up to 15% in city driving. Although currently only applied to diesel engines, the researchers expect to be able to apply the technology to gasoline, biodiesel and kerosene.
Avago has announced availability of the industry’s first 8 Gbps SFP+ LR (Long Reach) optical transceivers for Fibre Channel applications. The AFCT-57D5ATPZ operates over single-mode optical fibre at signalling rates up to 8,5 Gbps for distances up to 10 km. It also enables the production of high port-density, standards-based 8 Gbps storage area network (SAN) applications, such as inter-switch links, storage replication and other long-reach networks.
STMicroelectronics has announced an agreement with Navteq to collaborate on the development of a novel solution that combines a digital road map with positioning data to enable advanced driver assistance applications, such as curve over-speed warning and adaptive headlight control. Embedded in a small, low-cost module, the map and positioning engine (MPE) is designed to enhance driver safety and convenience in all vehicles, even when a driver navigation system is not resident.
BMW and NXP Semiconductors have unveiled a prototype of the world’s first multifunctional car key. The prototype features contactless payment, personalised access control and advanced functionalities including public transport e-ticketing. Powered by NXP’s SmartMX security chip, the prototype allows drivers to perform quick, secure and convenient electronic payments with a car key, creating exciting new usage scenarios for future consumers.
A team of researchers has invented what they are proposing as an alternative to using solder to mount components on printed circuit boards. Based on nanotube technology, the dry adhesive works without heat or solvents, and is suitable for vacuum environments. The material exhibits 10 N/cm adhesive force in the perpendicular direction, and 100 N/cm in the shear direction. Encouraged by these results, the team also plans to investigate the potential application of the technology to Spiderman-like suits that would enable people to scale vertical walls.
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