Southern Africa
Spescom has reported a 54,6% increase in revenues from R149m, for the corresponding period last year, to R231m for the first half of this financial year, ending 31 March. Net income for the period was confirmed to be R7,9m, representing a sizeable turnaround in performance when compared with last year's interim results which reflected a headline earnings loss of R8,6m. According to Spescom executive chairman, Tony Farah, the upward trend in performance began during the latter end of the fiscal 2000 and continued into the first half of 2001.
"The first half of last year was characterised by poor returns due to various factors including cutbacks in Telkom spending and the Y2K-hype. However, the second half showed a steady positive trend, in spite of extremely tough trading conditions. This enhanced performance can primarily be attributed to Spescom's strategy, aimed at positioning the group as a leading local and international player in the ICT field," he said.
Farah noted that the group is pursuing the achievement of its stated goals through the development of proprietary technology products and software, as well as through alliances with major international companies, and adds that it remains committed to its objective of generating 50% of earnings from offshore activities by the year 2003.
SAN People has officially opened new offices in Salem, New Hampshire, in the US. The offices host the worldwide marketing organisation, sales and customer services for its customers in the US and in Europe. South African customers are still served by SAN People's offices in Stellenbosch and Johannesburg. The US contact details are: SAN People, Inc 8, Stiles Road Salem, NH 03079; tel: (091) 603 893 6036, fax: (091) 603 893 3904, [email protected]
Overseas
Business
NEC has reported net income of $464m for the year ended 31 March, up nearly six-fold from $85m the previous year. NEC cited its extensive efforts to cut costs as the reason for the sharp rise, but said it expected the continued global slowdown to cause an income drop in the first half of the current fiscal year to $123m. Total sales for the fiscal year were $44,3 bn, up 8% from the prior year. By business units: NEC Electron Devices semiconductor group had $10 bn in sales, up 9,4% from the prior year with an operating profit of $559m; the PC-oriented NEC Solutions unit had sales of $18,3 bn, down 2% with an operating profit of $688m; NEC Networks had sales of $15 bn, up 20% with an operating profit of $680m; other business units had $6 bn in sales, up 3% with an operating profit of $164m.
Maxim reported record net revenues of $306,8m for its fiscal third quarter ending 31 March, a 35,4% increase over the same quarter a year ago. Net income increased to a record $103,9m in the third quarter, compared to $74,7m last year, a 39,1% increase, it reported. Said Jack Gifford, President and CEO, Maxim, "We expect much of the excess inventory to become obsolete as a new generation of communications equipment comes to market to meet the ever-increasing demand for data. Although the current downturn could prove to be atypical, our experience has shown that analog and mixed-signal companies typically go through later and less severe declines than their digital counterparts. Maxim's balance sheet remains strong." Maxim said it estimates that the combined revenues and earnings of Maxim and Dallas Semiconductor will decline in the fourth quarter from its pro-forma combined results for the March 2001 quarter by 15 to 20%, prior to merger-related charges and conformance of accounting policies. The company completed its acquisition of Dallas Semiconductor on 11 April, and will begin reporting the combined results at the end of Q4 2001.
National Semiconductor is expecting sales for the company's fourth quarter fiscal 2001, to decline 16 to 18% sequentially from the third quarter. Fourth quarter revenues are expected to be approximately $390-$400m. National said that, in response to weak business conditions, it is refocusing its resources and implementing a strategic cost-reduction programme which it will save it approximately $70-$80m annually.
Companies
Infineon Technologies has announced plans to acquire US optical chip supplier, Catamaran Communications, for $250m in stock. Catamaran has 50 employees and is focused on OC-768 (40 Gbps) and OC-192 (10 Gbps) synchronous digital hierarchy/synchronous optical networks (SDH/SONET) as well as 10 Gb Ethernet applications.
Micrel has acquired Kendin Communications for $215m in stock. The acquisition gives Micrel quick entry into the physical-layer (PHY) IC and switch-chip markets for Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gb Ethernet networks. Kendin has developed a family of PHYs and switching chips based on 'algorithmic signal processing architecture.' The architecture offers certain advantages over DSP-based chips, such as lower power consumption, reduced die-size and greater integration, according to the company.
Cirrus Logic has announced it is acquiring the assets of digital audio chip supplier, Peak Audio. The company's main product line, CobraNet, combines proprietary software, hardware and a network protocol to distribute digital audio over an Ethernet network. Cirrus Logic has also just announced its move to become a 'pure-play' consumer entertainment chip supplier.
Fairchild Semiconductor has announced a partnership between its Analog Power Management Group and Taiwan's Champion Microelectronic to develop next-generation, low-cost ICs for power factor correction (PFC) applications. In terms of the partnership, Champion will design and develop analog PFC circuits in exchange for licences to certain Fairchild patents and PFC products. The new PFC products will be manufactured by both companies and each company would be a second-source for the other, said Fairchild.
Hynix Semiconductor (formerly Hyundai Electronics) of South Korea, has announced a joint-development partnership with Virtual Silicon Technology to create advanced nonvolatile memory for embedded use in system-on-chip designs. The two companies will apply Virtual Silicon's eSi-NVM technology to enable Hynix to embed EEPROM and flash memory in 0,25 µm CMOS logic processes. The SoC design with memory will be used to create new ICs for smartcards, Bluetooth wireless systems, Wi-Fi network cards, cellphones and security systems, said Hynix.
IBM Microelectronics, Mitsubishi Electric, Pine Photonics Communications, Optillion and Tyco Electronics have joined the Ten Gigabit Ethernet multi-source agreement (MSA) group led by Agere and Agilent Technologies. The MSA, now known as the XENPAK standard relates to technology that supports the proposed IEEE 10 Gb Ethernet interoperability standard, and specifies a uniform form-factor, size, connector type and electrical pin-outs. It covers all four transceiver types defined in the proposed standard, including 850 nm serial, 1310 nm serial, 1310 nm WWDM and 1550 nm serial. The transceiver modules defined by this MSA are 38 x 121 x 17,4 mm, allowing eight devices to be mounted on typical line cards.
Intel and the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Computing Technology will jointly work towards developing advanced software compilers for R&D purposes. The research will be targeted to develop compilers to improve the performance of Intel's Itanium processor family, said Intel. The companies will develop 'modular' compiler components that they will use to perform specific optimisation tasks that will allow researchers to quickly test different techniques against a common base.
TRW is spinning-off a new company called Velocium, to develop ultrafast indium phosphide and gallium arsenide components for fibre optics and wireless telecommunications networks. The company's first InP product is a 40 Gbps OC-768 integrated photo-receiver. InP components provide four times the bandwidth of current components while using half the power, according to the company. Velocium will also manufacture modulator drivers, amplifiers for fibre-optic systems and InP power amplifiers for 2,5-3G wireless handsets, TRW said.
Infineon Technologies and Wind River Systems have announced a partnership to provide network system OEMs with fully-managed Layer 2 switch solutions. Through a value-added reseller agreement, Infineon will provide a turnkey solution for high performance, compact switches targeted at network applications for small-to-medium businesses, based on its 26-port AR2224 Ethernet switch-on-a-chip and Wind River Tornado for Managed Switches 2.0 embedded software.
Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia have established Wireless Village (www.wireless-village.org), an initiative to define and promote a set of universal specifications for mobile instant messaging and presence services (IMPS), and create a community of supporters. The specifications will be used for exchanging messages and presence information between mobile devices, mobile services and Internet-based instant messaging services. The Wireless Village initiative will deliver an architectural specification, protocol specifications, as well as test specifications and tools for mobile IMPS. The initiative will also define procedures and tools for testing conformance and interoperability of mobile instant messaging and presence services, said the companies.
Flextronics has won an outsourcing contract with Alcatel to assemble GSM phones in Europe. Under the agreement, 830 Alcatel employees at the company's Laval, France, manufacturing plant will be transferred to Flextronics.
Industry
Worldwide semiconductor revenues dropped 7% in March from sales in February as chip suppliers struggled with a tough combination of inventory corrections and weakening economies, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association's latest report. Semiconductor revenues in March were $14,40 bn, down from $15,48 bn in the prior month. Compared to a year ago, March revenues were 4,5% lower than $15,07 bn in March 2000. Japan, however, registered a 7% increase in revenues from the same month last year. All other regions fell in a year-to-year comparison of March sales. Sales in the Americas dropped the most, compared to percentage declines in other regions. Chip revenues totalled $4,11 bn in March, a 10,6% decline from same month last year and a 13,4% drop to $4,60 bn from February, said the SIA. Europe's chip revenues fell 0,7% to $3,28 bn in March compared to the same month last year, while they were 2% lower in March at $3,34 bn compared to February. Semiconductor sales in Asia Pacific dropped 10,4% to $3,42 bn vs the previous year. Chip sales in the region dropped 5,6% in March to $3,62 bn compared to February.
Dataquest has cut its forecast for the worldwide semiconductor industry for the fourth time in recent months, citing the downturn in the industry. Dataquest projects that the IC business will decline 17% from year 2000, to reach total sales of $188 bn for 2001. However, it predicts modest recovery for 2002, expecting worldwide sales to hit $213,3 bn, 13,2% more than 2001. Dataquest said that in 2001, all product types were seeing a serious decline in revenue, with the DRAM and flash memory category dropping 26%. In 2002 it expects memory to grow at roughly 26%, while the ASIC and system-on-chip segments will experience the highest overall compound annual growth rate in the semiconductor market through 2005, topping 10%. According to Dataquest, logic is consuming some of the other categories as more semiconductors move to market-specific or customer-unique high-density digital and analog chips that are integrating more processor cores and other standardised IP circuits. It said the IC market is expected to jump 24,2% in 2003 and 30,8% in 2004, but will drop by 2,8% in 2005.
Despite delays, economic slowdown and a recent slew of negative reports, the emerging Bluetooth market will shine. So says Cahners In-Stat Group, which forecasts that demands for Bluetooth-enabled devices will provide substantial opportunities for the technology with Bluetooth-enabled equipment shipments soaring to 955 million units in 2005, a 360% five-year compound annual growth rate. It said the semiconductor opportunity in this area will also be substantial as the Bluetooth radio and baseband silicon market will rise to $4,4 bn in 2005.
Gallium-arsenide (GaAs) devices will remain the predominant technology in the fibre-optic analog IC market, but suppliers of these products must reduce their costs to compete against silicon germanium (SiGe) chips, according to a new report from Strategy Analytics. According to the research group, the GaAs-based fibre-optic analog IC market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 34%, from $350m in 1999 to $1,621 bn by 2004.
Cirrus Logic has announced it will become a 'pure-play' consumer entertainment chip supplier, and focus on analog and DSP products for consumer entertainment applications while de-emphasising ICs for magnetic storage peripherals. The company said it was moving toward the higher growth and higher margin entertainment electronics business.
The ITU has announced that Telecom ASIA 2002 will be held in Hong Kong, China, from 2-7 December 2002. The event will be hosted by the Government of the People's Republic of China and will take place in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.
Technology
Network Elements has announced a multiprotocol ASIC for handling 10 Gbps traffic. The chip will handle Sonet, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), and Ethernet traffic at 10 Gbps. The chip is part of Network Elements' line-card module intended to cover all 10 Gbps processing from the physical layer up to Layer 2. This includes functions such as framing and mapping. The company's module-based strategy will offer OEMs the advantage to develop a single board that can be programmed for one of several protocol options, it said.
Mitsubishi Electric's US subsidiary has developed a TV video processor for the North American market that integrates a colour TV image signal processor and 8 bit microcontroller in one integrated circuit. The first chip in the company's Dreama series, this 80-pin CMOS processor handles a range of display functions - such as on-screen display and closed caption features - while four ASIC blocks perform video signal processing. It uses Mitsubishi's M37272 micro- controller core and also includes 40 KB of ROM; 1,152 KB of RAM; and 64 bytes of ROM correction memory.
Transilica has developed what it says is the world's smallest system-on-chip solution for Bluetooth wireless systems. The company's OneChip device features flash memory, RF transceiver, baseband modem, microprocessor, and SRAM - all contained on an BGA-packaged IC. The 8 mm2 OneChip supports serial port, USB or codec interface applications, depending on the software stack implementation.
Xilinx has introduced an Altera-to-Xilinx design migration kit that will allow users of Altera parts and Max+plus II software to transfer their designs to Xilinx's Integrated Synthesis Environment (ISE) tool flow. Rules of the program are posted on the Xilinx website.
Vishay Intertechnology has announced that it is shipping a new series of monolithic ceramic chip capacitors (MLCCs) which are the industry's first such devices to feature an X8R dielectric. The new Vishay Vitramon devices are optimised for high-temperature automotive and industrial environments and for applications including bypass, decoupling and filtering.
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