South Africa
Electronics and electrical engineering company, Reunert, confirmed that the South African competition authorities have unconditionally approved its acquisition of ECN Telecommunications. The purchase price of R180 million is subject to a financial audit, with the final price estimated to be in the range of R170 to R190 million.
The CSIR and South Africa's electric vehicle developer, Optimal Energy, have signed a memorandum of understanding to support the localisation of the manufacturing of components and parts of Joule, South Africa's own electric vehicle. Some projects that will be involved are for micro components such as temperature and pressure sensors that can be manufactured through additive manufacturing processes, and the testing of batteries. The CSIR is in the process of expanding its intellectual property portfolio in batteries with a view to being the R&D partner for the international electric vehicle battery manufacturer when it gets onboard at a later stage.
Overseas
Business
National Semiconductor reported sales of $374,1 million and net income of $67,1 million, or 26 cents per diluted share, for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2011, which ended 29 May. The company’s fourth quarter sales were 9% higher than the third quarter of fiscal 2011, when it reported $343,9 million in sales, and 6% lower than the $398,5 million reported in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010. Fourth quarter net income was an increase from the $59,4 million, or 24 cents per diluted share, in the third quarter of fiscal 2011. In last year's fourth quarter, National reported net income of $79,2 million, or 33 cents per diluted share.
Companies
Based on its recent analysis of the wireless test equipment market, Frost & Sullivan recognised Agilent Technologies with the 2011 Global Frost & Sullivan Award for Market Share Leadership of the Year for emerging as the leader in the market with a total share of 16,1% in 2010– an increase of about 21% in revenues when compared with 2009 numbers.
API Technologies, a provider of electronic systems, subsystems, RF, and secure communications products and services for defence, aerospace and commercial applications, announced the successful completion of its acquisition of Spectrum Control. API completed the acquisition through a merger of a wholly-owned subsidiary with and into Spectrum. As a result of the merger, all outstanding shares of Spectrum common stock were converted into the right to receive $20,00 per share in cash.
austriamicrosystems has entered into an agreement to acquire 100% of the shares in Texas Advanced Optoelectronic Solutions (TAOS). The acquisition price amounts to approximately $320 million. Depending on the achievement of certain revenue criteria by TAOS in 2011, an increase of up to a maximum of $10 million may occur.
ARM announced that it has acquired Obsidian Software, a market leader in verification and validation used in the design of increasingly complex processors. This acquisition augments ARM's drive in matching its verification strategies with the rate of change in its complex SoC IP components. Financial details were not disclosed.
Spansion and Samsung Electronics have agreed to settle all ongoing patent litigation and disputes. Under the terms of the agreement, the companies have agreed to a seven-year cross licence of each other's patent portfolios. As part of the overall agreement, Samsung will pay Spansion $150 million over five years.
In an EDA piracy case, AWR recently won a motion for partial summary judgment against ZTE Corporation, the largest publically traded Chinese telecommunications company. ZTE violated the terms of AWR's software licence agreement, which prohibits access and use of its proprietary software with ‘cracked’ or unauthorised licence codes. AWR argued that when ZTE employees installed AWR's software, ZTE became bound by a click-through licence agreement that prohibited its employees from using the software with unauthorised licences.
Industry
The Semiconductor Industry Association announced that Steven Laub, president and CEO of Atmel, and Tunç Doluca, president and CEO of Maxim, have joined the association’s board of directors. The pair join a distinguished group of industry executives from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Altera, Analog Devices, Fairchild Semiconductor, Freescale Semiconductor, Globalfoundries, IBM, Intel, Intersil, Linear Technology, LSI, Micron Technology, ON Semiconductor, PMC-Sierra, Qualcomm CDMA Technologies and Texas Instruments.
Shipments of home automation systems will total about 1,8 million worldwide this year. But according to ABI Research, that number is set to rise sharply soon, exceeding 12 million in 2016. This robust growth is the result of standards-based, ‘no new wire’ wireless and powerline technologies such as ZigBee that drive down system costs and expand the addressable market. The market is also seeing considerable innovation. One example is Google’s recently launched Android@Home framework, which is essentially a middleware layer sitting on top of the newest Android OS. The framework provides APIs to enable devices such as light switches and consumer appliances to be discovered and connected to a central home automation application and controlled via smartphone. A key aspect of the announcement is a new low-power wireless communications protocol to support device connectivity in cases where Wi-Fi is not available or practical.
Technology
Freescale Semiconductor has cooperated with engineers from BMW to develop technology that is touted to make 360° parking assist systems more affordable and accessible for a broad range of vehicles. The Freescale Qorivva 32-bit MCU sits next to multiple cameras placed around a vehicle, allowing direct interface to a CMOS image sensor. Once video images are captured, the video data is compressed using low-latency motion JPEG compression and then ultimately sent over a two-wire Ethernet cable.
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