South Africa
TRX Electronics has been appointed as the official distributor for Mouser Electronics, one of the industry’s fastest growing global catalogue and online semiconductor and electronic components distributors. Based in Pretoria, TRX can be contacted via e-mail at [email protected] or on +27 (0)12 347 4419.
Overseas
Business
Micron Technology announced results of operations for its third quarter of fiscal 2012, which ended 31 May. The company had a net loss attributable to Micron shareholders of $320 million, or $0,32 per diluted share, on net sales of $2,2 billion. These results compare to a net loss of $282 million, or $0,29 per diluted share, on net sales of $2,0 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2012, and net income of $75 million, or $0,07 per diluted share, on net sales of $2,1 billion for the third quarter of fiscal 2011.
Companies
Cypress Semiconductor has commenced a tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding common stock of Ramtron for $2,68 per share in cash. This represents a 48% premium over Ramtron’s closing price of $1,81 per share on 11 June 2012, the day before Cypress publicly disclosed its offer for Ramtron. This amounts to roughly $9 million more than an offer made previously by Cypress.
Analog Devices and TSMC announced a collaboratively developed analog process technology platform for precision analog integrated circuits (ICs). The new development is set to improve analog performance for a number of devices, including A-D and D-A converters, power management devices and audio coders/decoders. Performance enhancements achieved with the 0,18 micron, 5 V process include an order of magnitude noise improvement, 70% lower standby leakage current, 50% improvement in linearity and 50% better capacitor and resistor matching.
InterDigital and Intel announced that certain of InterDigital’s subsidiaries have signed a definitive agreement to sell to Intel roughly 1700 patents and patent applications for $375 million in cash. The agreement involves patents primarily related to 3G, LTE and 802.11 technologies. InterDigital is an active developer of advanced wireless technologies including WCDMA, HSDPA and HSUPA 3G technologies, as well as LTE and LTE-Advanced 4G technologies.
Industry
According to new research by Berg Insight, the installed base of small cell cellular base stations increased to about 2,2 million units in 2011. Growing at a compound annual growth rate of 44,8%, the installed base is forecasted to reach 14 million units in 2016. Small cells encompass a range of low-power cellular base stations including femtocells, picocells and microcells with gradually higher output power and capacity in terms of simultaneous users. They are designed to complement the base stations forming the cellular macro network by providing enhancements in coverage and capacity in locations such as homes, offices and public venues.
While the ‘timing devices’ classification of semiconductor products, including traditional crystal oscillators, is a large $6,3 billion market, it is the timing circuits segment, which includes clock generation and clock distribution ICs, MEMS resonators and CMOS oscillators, that is of particular interest to component suppliers looking for logic market growth opportunities. Databeans estimates that in 2012 this total market will reach $4,5 billion in global revenue. Over the next five years both shipments and sales will expand by 6% annually on average.
In May 2012, venture investment dollars received by semiconductor companies (i.e., fabless companies, integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) and semiconductor suppliers) was $134,5 million, a 42,5% decrease from April 2012 and a 122,7% increase from May 2011. According to the Global Semiconductor Alliance, $572,9 million was raised by semiconductor companies in the first five months of 2012, an increase of 9,7% from the first five months of 2011.
Technology
Freescale Semiconductor introduced the centrepiece of its third-generation QorIQ portfolio – the new Layerscape system architecture. This core-agnostic, software-aware framework is a fundamental new approach to networking system architectures – one that puts software and programmability at the forefront. It modularises packet acceleration and forwarding operations from high-level routing decisions; streamlines interaction between the layers; leverages a synchronous run-to-completion model; and supports a consistent programming framework across the architecture using standard C/C++ languages.
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