Overseas
Business
RF Micro Devices reported financial results for its fiscal 2012 second quarter ended 1 October 2011. Revenue increased approximately 14% sequentially to $243,8 million, compared to $214,2 million in the June 2011 quarter, primarily as a result of broad-based share gains in cellular handsets and smartphones. Sales of the company’s 3G/4G cellular products grew more than 50% sequentially. On a GAAP basis, quarterly net income was $14,3 million, or $0,05 per diluted share.
Fairchild Semiconductor reported sales for its third quarter of $403,2 million, down 7% from the prior quarter and 3% lower than the third quarter of 2010. Net income was $35,8 million or $0,28 per diluted share, compared to $44,9 million or $0,34 per diluted share in the prior quarter and $35,8 million or $0,28 per diluted share in the third quarter of 2010.
Texas Instruments announced third quarter revenue of $3,47 billion, net income of $601 million and earnings per share (EPS) of 51 cents. These figures were all lower than last year’s totals of $3,74 billion in revenue, net income of $859 million and EPS of 71 cents. In part, these relative losses can be attributed to the company’s acquisition of National Semiconductor, which dented EPS by 9 cents.
Maxim enjoyed record net revenue of $636 million for its fiscal 2012 first quarter ended 24 September, a 1,5% increase from the $626,5 million revenue recorded in the prior quarter. GAAP diluted earnings per share in the quarter were $0,44.
STMicroelectronics reported financial results for the third quarter and nine months ended 1 October. On a year-over-year basis, ST’s net revenues decreased 8,1% to reach $2,4 billion, with the Americas down by 1,2%, Japan and Korea by 5,6%, EMEA by 8,8% and Greater China and South Asia by 10,6%. Net income was $71 million or $0,08 per diluted share, compared to $0,46 and $0,22 per diluted share in the prior and year-ago quarters, respectively.
Net sales for Microchip’s second quarter of fiscal 2012 were $340,6 million, down 9,1% sequentially from the immediately preceding quarter, and down 10,9% from the prior year’s second fiscal quarter. GAAP net income was $79,3 million, or 40 cents per diluted share, down 20,1% from $99,3 million, or 49 cents per diluted share, in the immediately preceding quarter, and down 24,3% from $104,7 million, or 55 cents per diluted share, in last year’s second fiscal quarter. The company’s 32-bit microcontroller business demonstrated strong revenue growth, up 10,4% on a sequential basis.
Flash memory maker, Spansion, will slash its workforce by 20% – representing some 750 jobs – on the back of poor operating results for its third financial quarter. The company has seen net sales decline from $307,6 million in the third quarter of last year to $258,3 in the most recent quarter, and will close its Kuala Lumpur test and assembly facility as part of a cost reduction plan intended to save $30 million annually.
Intel reported third quarter results, setting new records for microprocessor units shipped, EPS, earnings and revenue, which was up 28% year-over-year. On a GAAP basis, the company reported third quarter revenue of $14,2 billion, operating income of $4,8 billion, net income of $3,5 billion and EPS of 65 cents.
Silicon Laboratories reported third quarter revenue of $119,1 million and GAAP earnings per share of $0,26 on net income of $11,3 million. These figures compare with revenue of $120,2 million and diluted earnings per share of $0,40 on $18,2 million net income in last year’s corresponding period.
ARM announced strong growth for the third quarter and nine months ended 30 September, driven by 14 new licensees and an increase in shipments of chips based on its processor technology. Revenue for the quarter was £120,2 million, a 20% increase over last year, while the year-to-date figure stands at £354 million for 2011 – 21% more than last year. Earnings per share grew even more, reaching 3,05 pence for the quarter – 47% more than last year – and 8,75 pence for the year to date.
Xilinx announced second quarter fiscal 2012 sales of $555,2 million, down 10% sequentially from the prior quarter and down 10% from the same quarter of the prior year. Net income was $126,3 million, or $0,47 per diluted share. The company suffered weaker than expected business conditions particularly in the communications, industrial and ‘other’ categories.
Atmel announced financial results for its third quarter ended 30 September. Revenues were $479,4 million, up slightly from $478,6 million for the second quarter of 2011, and an 8% increase compared to $444,3 million for the third quarter of 2010. Net income, on a GAAP basis, totalled $116,7 million or $0,25 per diluted share for the third quarter of 2011. This compares to second quarter 2011 net income of $90,9 million, or $0,19 per diluted share, and net income of $219,8 million or $0,47 per diluted share for the third quarter of 2010.
Trimble’s third quarter 2011 revenues were $417,4 million, up approximately 31% compared to the third quarter of 2010. Third quarter 2011 GAAP net income was $28,0 million, down 15% compared to the third quarter of last year. Diluted earnings per share in the third quarter of 2011 were $0,22, compared to $0,27 in the third quarter of 2010.
Companies
Research in Motion has partnered with QNX on BlackBerry BBX, its next generation mobile platform. The BBX platform will include BBX-OS, and will support BlackBerry cloud services and development environments for both HTML5 and native developers.
RS Components has received the 2010 Demand Creation Award from component manufacturer Panasonic Industrial, as well as the 2010 Catalogue Distributor Award Trophy by Traco Electronics. During the year, RS added 6800 new Panasonic components to its inventory, taking the total offering to over 8000 parts, while its sales of Traco power supplies grew 37% over those in 2009.
Huawei has honoured RF Micro Devices with its 2011 Best Supplier Award, for its product supply and support across multiple Huawei product applications, including cellular handsets, smartphones, wireless infrastructure and point-to-point cellular backhaul.
ARM has acquired Prolific, a company which develops leading-edge IC design optimisation software tools designed to reduce development time and improve the performance of cell-based designs. The acquisition augments ARM’s strategy to provide innovative physical IP products and will help it meet the increasing complexity challenges of 20 nm and below process technologies.
Industry
According to iSuppli, the impact of the recent flooding in Thailand is not significant enough to have a measurable effect on overall semiconductor industry revenue growth, despite the fact that numerous semiconductor suppliers headquartered around the world maintain assembly and test operations there. Semiconductor suppliers whose operations have been affected include ON Semiconductor, ROHM Semiconductor, Lapis Semiconductor, Hana Semiconductor, Stars Microelectronics, Vigilant Technology, STATS ChipPac and Toshiba. Other companies operating test and assembly facilities in the nation have not yet suffered any direct impact from the disaster, including Microchip, Maxim, NXP, Spansion and UTAC. However, some of these companies have encountered indirect impacts due to disaster-related disruptions among their suppliers.
As the number of mobile payment users grows to over 375 million in 2015, the demand for devices with near field communications (NFC), the underlying communications technology behind many mobile payment solutions, grows as well. New research from In-Stat forecasts that adoption of this technology will push global annual shipments of NFC chips to over 1,2 billion by 2015. It also notes that the focus of the NFC market is shifting from payment applications that can be enabled by NFC, to marketing applications. With this focus shift, retailers are expected to begin pilot programmes in the latter part of 2011 and into 2012 that incorporate smart posters into their signage and outdoor advertising strategies.
Born in June 2010, Bluetooth 4.0 (the version that includes low energy functionality), has been christened and will in future be known as Bluetooth Smart (for sensor type devices, such as heart rate monitors) and Bluetooth Smart Ready (for hub type devices ie, smartphones). According to IMS Research, this next version of Bluetooth is expected to be incorporated increasingly in new phones, with most phones sold by the end of 2012 expected to include it.
Power.org announced that the latest version of the Embedded Power Architecture Platform Requirements (ePAPR) specification is available for download. ePAPR version 1.1 includes some incremental changes and clarifications to ePAPR 1.0 and adds a new chapter on virtualisation. The ePAPR specification defines standards for Power Architecture systems regarding how a boot program starts a client program (eg, an operating system) including device trees and how multiple CPUs are initialised and started on a multicore processor.
Although only 2% growth is forecast for the overall semiconductor market this year, IC Insights predicts that the top 20 chip firms will average a 6% increase in 2011 sales as compared to 2010. Mind you, the companies on the top 20 list are expected to experience mixed fortunes, with Qualcomm, spurred by a smartphone market that is forecast to jump 73% this year, expected to log a strong 33% increase, while on the other end of the spectrum, Elpida is forecast to register a sales decline of 39%. Intel is forecast to remain firmly in control of the number one spot in the ranking this year. In fact, helped by its acquisition of Infineon’s wireless IC business, Intel is forecast to extend its lead over second-ranked Samsung by registering a 47% higher semiconductor sales level than Samsung in 2011, compared to a 24% margin in 2010.
Worldwide sales of semiconductors were $25,8 billion for the month of September, an increase of 2,7% from the prior month when sales were $25,1 billion, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). A 14,9% quarter-over-quarter increase in Japan was driven by progress made in the country’s recovery efforts.
Reflecting the general hesitancy of the market, worldwide silicon wafer area shipments decreased 2% during the third quarter of 2011 when compared to the previous quarter, according to the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG). Total silicon wafer area shipments were 2 354 million square inches, 5% less than third quarter 2010 shipments.
Technology
ARM has disclosed technical details of its new ARMv8 architecture, the first from ARM to include a 64-bit instruction set. ARMv8 broadens the ARM architecture to embrace 64-bit processing and extends virtual addressing, building on the heritage of the 32-bit ARMv7 architecture upon which cores such as the Cortex-A9 and Cortex-A15 processors are built. ARM will disclose processors based on ARMv8 during 2012, with consumer and enterprise prototype systems expected in 2014.
© Technews Publishing (Pty) Ltd | All Rights Reserved
printer friendly version