Southern Africa
Local IT and telecoms research house, BMI-TechKnowledge, believes the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) exhibition held recently in Midrand is integral to the telecommunications transformation process in Africa. According to the latest BMI-T research, the African telecoms market can expect to grow in 2002 at a similar rate as in the past couple of years, ie mobile markets will grow in excess of 35%, while fixed-line is estimated to grow at 25%. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the period 2000-2005 is projected to be 33% for the mobile market and 25% for fixed-line, it says. Over the past year more than US$4 bn has been invested in Africa by multi-national companies such as MTN, Econet Wireless, MSI and Telkom SA. Dobek Pater, BMI-T Africa analyst, says that even with the global slowdown in the telecommunications market he is optimistic about the future of African foreign investment. He says: "In the next five years, we predict that between US$6-8 bn will be poured into our continent and specifically into the IT and telecommunications arenas. Key market drivers include the phenomenal growth of mobile in particular the issuing of GSM licences and the issuing of SNO and TNO licences by many of the countries." In the fixed-line market, the proliferation of SNO and TNO licences being awarded is fuelling the growth of the telecoms markets in Africa and in turn is strengthening many economies says the group. According to Pater, the opportunities lie in regional network development eg COMESA, SADC regions and in certain prospective markets like Tanzania, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Mozambique.
Fibreplus is establishing a local training academy to offer a complete range of R&M training courses and certification programmes. Swiss-based R&M is a leading supplier of high-rate generic data and telecommunications cabling systems. Hermann Sidler, Chief Technology Officer at Fibreplus says that the local R&M training academy will offer comprehensive training for installers, system planners and distributors of fibre-optic cabling and associated products, services and technical support.
Sivan Engineering Supplies has been appointed sole agents for Alfred Tronser of Germany, a manufacturer of air variable capacitors for professional electronics.
Mitel Networks, a provider of next-generation IP telephony solutions and industry leader in broadband technologies, launched an aggressive marketing plan, devised especially for the South African region, at ITU Africa 2001 exhibition. Mitel, who has addressed the South African market for the past four years, said it believes South Africa is a key region in which they wish to continue making an investment. "South Africa is a renowned financial centre and supports a number of vertical markets whose businesses will benefit from the introduction of our IP based solutions," says Mitel founder, Terry Matthews. "In addition, we have a number of global customers who have business interests in SA and we believe there is a need for an increased presence in order for us to support their needs in this country." Mitel Networks recently signed a co-marketing and distribution agreement with March Networks.
In response to an online appeal for a cost-sensitive, complete electronic communications infrastructure, the University of the Witwatersrand's Perinatal HIV Research Unit has been aided by donations from three local companies. InfoSat, provider of business communication solutions, will, for an initial 12 month period, sponsor satellite Internet access via a 128K leased line as well as e-mail, remote access server and VPN facilities. In addition, a joint sponsorship between CubicICE, B2B marketing and communication specialist, and distributor of healthcare products Afriq Medical comes in the form of free website development, hosting and maintenance. The Perinatal HIV Research Unit is situated at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto.
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, the new joint venture between Telefonaktie-bolaget LM Ericsson and Sony Corporation, began operating from October this year. According to Mats Paulson, Sony Ericsson's Market Director for Middle East and Africa, the company is 100% committed to the mobile communications industry and all its facets in South Africa. "There has been some speculation in the marketplace about our position within the industry. Quite simply, Sony Ericsson is not pulling out - we are here to stay and grow," he affirmed. "The company sees SA not only as the economic powerhouse of the continent but also as its most important market within the sub-Saharan region." The company believes that as the financial and logistical hub of the sub-Saharan territory and therefore the most developed and mature market in Africa, South Africa is seen as a country of growth and opportunity. Sony Ericsson will host a number of 'roadshows' in Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg that will be used as a platform to introduce the new organisation and its structure to customers, service providers, dealers and operators.
After extensive field trials at its Randfontein area office, Eskom says it has approved Energy Measurements' CASHPOWER2000 Suprima electricity prepayment software, giving other Eskom regions the go-ahead to implement the solution. Energy Measurements said that the Suprima software also met all the requirements for the Eskom EBSST (electricity basic support service tariff) pilot project. EBSST is government's initiative to provide consumers with the first electricity purchase per month free of charge.
Gauteng's wired and not-yet-wired young set are to be treated to a new South African bright-lights technology festival says Reed Exhibitions. The company recently launched 'Pulse', a new interactive exhibition aimed at the home and all things electronic in the home. According to the exhibition company, Pulse interactively showcases all consumer electronics, including PCs and accessories; digital photography; personal productivity devices, cellphones and accessories; musical equipment and audio equipment including home theatre, music composition and editing systems; personal audio, computer games and more.
RF Design is hosting a GPS seminar on the 29 November 2001. Three specialists from Swiss-based company µ-Blox will be presenting. To attend contact Andrew Hutton, (011) 805 4462.
Overseas
Business
Avanced Micro Devices has said that current market conditions - especially weakness in flash memories - will delay the company's return to profitability until the second quarter of 2002. "Seasonal patterns in the PC industry lead us to believe that AMD PC processor revenues in the first quarter of 2002 could retreat somewhat from the current quarter," said Jerry Sanders, CEO of AMD. "The outlook for flash memory going into 2002 remains uncertain, and pricing pressures on flash memory products are expected to remain intense." He added, however, that AMD's cost reduction programme will contribute to improved operating results in Q2 next year and beyond. In the third quarter, AMD sales sequentially declined 22% to $765,9m, resulting in net loss of $187m, including charges.
Vishay Intertechnology reported sales declined 13% sequentially to $332,3m in the third quarter compared to $383,4m in Q2. Before restructuring charges of $11,8m and inventory write-downs of $35,0m, Vishay's net loss in the quarter totalled $3,4m. The total net loss, including charges, was $39,2m. As a result, the discretes and passive devices supplier said it is accelerating its cost reduction efforts throughout the company.
Maxim has reported net revenues of $239,4m for its fiscal first quarter ending 29 September 2001, a 43,3% decrease from the $422,3m reported for first quarter fiscal 2001 and a 24,7% decrease from the $318,1m reported for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2001. Net income for the quarter was $61,3m compared to $119,1m last year, a 48,5% decrease. Said Jack Gifford, CEO: "Allowing that the economic recovery will continue through the next two to three quarters, Maxim performed generally according to our plan for the first quarter of this recovery. Order patterns stabilised early in the first quarter and increased as the quarter progressed. While we are encouraged by the increase in order rates, we remain cautious about our short-term revenue outlook because of customers' backlog situations and their unwillingness to commit to inventories and longer term orders due to short lead times. As lead times begin to creep out, we expect bookings rates to continue to increase."
Companies
Hewlett-Packard has announced that it intends to acquire Compaq Computers for $25 bn in what will be the computer industry's largest deal to date. Should the deal go through, it would create anticipated annual revenues of $87 bn with pro forma assets combination of more than $56 bn, provided planned cost savings materialise. Although the boards of both companies have agreed to the acquisition, family members of Hewlett-Packard co-founder, William Hewlett, have reportedly planned to vote against the proposed merger. They believe that the merger would hurt Hewlett-Packard by further exposing it to a declining market for personal computers and distracting managers from helping the business grow.
Vishay Intertechnology has announced the acquisition of North American capacitor company Mallory, a manufacturer of wet tantalum electrolytic capacitors. It also markets and distributes aluminium, tantalum, film and ceramic capacitors. In the fiscal year ended October 2001, Mallory had sales of approximately $44m.
Cadence Design Systems has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Silicon Perspective Corporation (SPC), a privately-held design technology company based in Santa Clara. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. SPC's RTL virtual prototyping tool, First Encounter, includes hierarchical floorplanning, placement and analysis.
DuPont has announced that it has taken a stake in light-emitting polymer pioneer Cambridge Display Technology (CDT). As part of the agreement, DuPont and its display subsidiary, Uniax, will receive a nonexclusive license to technology and IP held by CDT. This will enable DuPont to produce both active and passive light emitting polymer display devices.
Industry
Motorola is planning to invest $10 bn in China by 2006. The five-year investment plan covers semiconductor facilities and joint ventures. Motorola plans to up its annual investment in the country by around $6,6 bn. Motorola already employs 13 000 people in China. Motorola also operates eight joint ventures there, with a variety of manufacturing partners and network operators.
Worldwide revenues for flat-panel displays are expected to increase 17,8% in 2002 after falling 8,2% in 2001 to $22,5 bn, according to a quarterly forecast report from DisplaySearch. The research firm has lowered its four-year forecast however, because of weakness in mobile phones and price erosion in large panel displays. DisplaySearch now predicts that flat-panel display revenues will reach $49,3 bn in 2005, which would be a CAGR of 21% from $22,5 bn 2001.
IBM has announced it plans to build a supercomputer that is smaller and 15 times speedier than the current fastest computer. The new computer is expected to be used for everything from weather modelling to studying genomics data and running commercial database applications, said IBM. This is the second computer planned as part of an expanding five-year, $100m project called 'Blue Gene' which IBM began in 1999 with the intention of studying proteins. Blue Gene/L is expected to be completed in 2004, about 1,5 years earlier than the other Blue Gene computer, called Blue Gene/C. Blue Gene/L will have a processing speed of 200 teraflops - slower than Blue Gene/C's expected 1000 teraflops, but around 15 times faster than the world's current fastest computer, ASCI White.
Yankee Group's Media and Entertainment report states that 75% of US households can be expected to have high-speed Internet access available to them by the end of 2001. This is up from about 40% of the homes that could hook to cable modems or DSL services at the end of 2000. Cable modem service will continue to be more broadly available, reaching 66% of US homes by year's end, while about 45% of US homes will have access to digital subscriber line (DSL) services for high-speed Internet connections, according to the report.
Intense Photonics has opened a specialist semiconductor fab in High Blantyre, Scotland that supports the processing of compound III-V materials for making broadband fibre-optic devices. This gives the company complete control over its unique quantum well intermixing (QWI) technology, providing a platform for producing highly integrated photonics ICs. The fab has the capability to process both gallium arsenide and indium phosphide - semiconductor materials covering all the key optical transmission frequencies in use today and coming into use. QWI allows the properties of a semiconductor material to be modified, typically allowing its energy bandgap to be controlled - making it either opaque or transparent to light - such that multiple optical communications functions can be monolithically integrated.
Clear Logic has been awarded a patent on its bitstream-based ASIC conversion technology. The company says the patent protects its method of creating an ASIC using the bitstream from a programmable logic device. In view of Altera's recent announcement of its HardCopy technology, Clear Logic said it has notified Altera of the existence of the patent and sent a copy of the patent to Altera for review. According to Don Knowlton, Clear Logic's Marketing Vice President, HardCopy may be similar to Clear Logic's proprietary and patented technology because both use information from bitstreams for the FPGA-to-ASIC conversion process.
Motorola has announced that it has shipped its first five billion 68HC05 8 bit microcontrollers. This is a significant milestone in that Motorola claims it is the only microcontroller manufacturer to date to have shipped such large quantities of a single product line. Appliance manufacturer Electrolux was presented with the five-billionth 68HC05 device at a special ceremony. The 68HC05 family consists of flexible, general-purpose devices featuring a broad variety of memory options, voltage and speeds, I/O, timers and other on-chip peripherals, states Motorola.
Semicon Japan, the world's largest event for semiconductor manufacturing is returning to the Makuhari Messe, Chiba, Japan, 5-7 December 2001. The annual trade show is organised by Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) and will feature the latest technologies, materials, and services for semiconductor wafer processing, testing and assembly. Around 1623 companies will exhibit from 28 countries.
Technology
Infineon Technologies' new 32 bit chip card controller has been named as Best Technological Innovation 2001 and recipient of a Sesames Award. The award was announced at the Cartes 2001 in Paris in October. The award was for the first member in the new 88 family, the SLE88CX720P. It features superlative computing power and leading-edge security capability. Info on SLE88CX720P can be found at www.infineon.com/security_and_chipcard_ics
US company AuthenTec has developed a fingerprint sensor small enough to fit a cellphone or PDA. Using an RF field technology, the 6,35 mm square sensor measures electrical signal strength beneath a finger's surface and is said to capture prints even if they are marred by dirt, grease or moisture. The EntrePad AES3500 uses a technique - called 'RF field' or 'antenna array technology' - that uses a semiconductor device to generate and measure a radio frequency field. This is used in preference to optical technologies since the sensors can be made smaller.
SanDisk has introduced a 1 GB CompactFlash (CF) memory card, claimed to be the world's highest capacity card in the standard CF Type I card. The high-capacity card will typically be able to store, for example, more than 1000 digital images, more than 20 hours of digital music or several hours of video. The growing popularity of high-resolution digital cameras, digital music players and other consumer electronics is boosting demand for large-capacity CompactFlash cards.
NEC Electronics has added two new case sizes, J and B3, to its conductive-polymer 'neocapacitor' offering. The low-profile neocapacitor series now includes the 0,8 mm high-J and 1,2 mm high-P A2 and B3 case sizes, enabling support of capacitances in a range of 2,2 to 47 µF. According to NEC, by employing conductive polymer instead of a manganese-dioxide cathode, it has achieved a tantalum capacitor that realises low equivalent series resistance (ESR) while maintaining a shape and structure identical to the conventional product.
Via Technologies of Taiwan has announced a new version of its Pentium 4-compliant chip set line. The new chipset, called the Via ProSavageDDR P4M266, supports PCs based on the Pentium 4 processor line. The device supports DDR (double-data-rate) SDRAM memory, AGP 8X, and 2D/3D graphics, based on S3 Graphics' ProSavage8 core. It also handles Ethernet-based protocols and Ultra ATA-133.
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