News
SINGAPORE -- Seagate Technology today announced that it is setting up its third media plant in Singapore to expand its recording media manufacturing operations.
Global demand for hard disc drives is growing, and expected to reach $40 billion by 2009.
Today’s announcement establishes Singapore as Seagate’s central media manufacturing hub. With the third plant, operations will supply about 80% of Seagate’s production of recording media, a critical component in the assembly of its disc drives.
The plant will be built close to the company’s existing Woodlands facility. Production is expected to start by mid 2008 and create up to 3,000 jobs when the plant is fully operational.
Seagate’s media manufacturing operations in Singapore spans over a decade. The company established its first overseas volume manufacturing facility outside the U.S. in Singapore in 1982 and its first recording media operations facility outside North America in 1996.
In 2005, Singapore accounted for a quarter of the world’s market share for disc media. In addition to Seagate, companies like Showa Denko and Hoya have made significant hard disk media operations in Singapore.
THIEF RIVER FALLS, MN – Digi-Key Corp. has signed a deal to distribute the integrated antenna
product line of Cambridge,
UK-based Antenova
Ltd. Digi-Key will sell the products globally.
Antenova's radio antenna modules and other products are used in wireless applications such as mobile handsets, portable devices and other consumer electronics.
Antenova products are available for purchase directly from
Digi-Key and are featured in its print and online catalogs.
In a statement, Digi-Key president and COO Mark Larson said, “ “We are very excited to add this innovative company to our line card. I am certain that the rapid design and ease of use benefits of Antenova’s products will be of consequential interest and appeal to our customers.”
“Antenova is proud to be working with Digi-Key to further grow our customer base,” said David Nuti, North American sales manager for Antenova. “This agreement underpins our commitment to providing the best integrated antenna solutions and support to our global handset, portable device and laptop computer customers and partners.”
In a joint effort to improve supplier collaboration, Microsoft and Intel announced proposals for the next-generation of open, interoperable business standards for small-to-medium enterprise supplier collaboration, based on the Office Open XML formats.
Under the management of the open standards body Ecma International, the Open XML document formats are now being finalized as a worldwide standard by leading tech companies including Intel. The document format standard offers flexible support for integration external XML information, which is critical to RosettaNet requirements.
Also announced was the establishment of a customer advisory board composed of companies representing various market segments, including Applied Materials, Flextronics, Juniper Networks, Nvidia, Xilinx and others.
The one-hour online event takes place Oct. 3, at 9 and 3 EST.
Topics to be covered include the company's Ultiboard interface, advanced routing and placement, managing design constraints, exporting industry standard formats and more. To register, visit http://www.electronicsworkbench.com/news/pronews3b.html.
Plans call for a 26,300-sq. ft., two-story facility to be located adjacent to the company’s headquarters.
IC Packaging & Test Roadmaps: Device Trends Impact on Packaging & Test Technology and Supply Chain, the annual roadmap symposium, will overlay IC device trends with the associated current and future technology solutions for packaging and test and will also explore challenges associated with demands for full turnkey supply chain services.
For more information, visit www.meptec.org.
EL SEGUNDO, CA — The U.S. in 2006 is expected to maintain its lead in the worldwide electronics equipment design with the nation’s activities in this area driving the most semiconductor purchasing of any country, according to new data from iSuppli Corp. However, China’s rapid growth in electronic-design-generated semiconductor purchasing activity is continuing and the country is closing the gap, the research firm said.
“Design of electronic goods leads directly to equipment production, which in turn drives semiconductor purchasing. Companies that engage in design of electronic equipment, such as PCs, mobile phones and televisions, also are responsible for specifying the use of particular chips in the products being developed,” said Min-Sun Moon, OEM spend analyst for iSuppli. “Thus, these companies and the nations where they operate have a major influence on global semiconductor spending.”
The figures beat The Street's estimates of $2.8 billion. However, organic growth is expected to slow from 32% in fiscal 2006 to 11% in fiscal 2007, due in part to the end of a large contract with Philips.
Production will take place at LaBarge's Joplin, MO, and Huntsville, AK, facilities and is expected to continue through October 2007.
LaBarge, an EMS provider, is a Raytheon preferred supplier and received Raytheon's 2004 Leadership Excellence Award for outstanding business practices.
EL SEGUNDO, CA — The global television market is rapidly changing, and so are the rankings among the global leaders, according to iSuppli Corp.
First quarter leader TTE Corp. of China fell to third place in the unit-shipment rankings in the second quarter, supplanted by LG Electronics Corp. and Samsung Electronics, which took the first and second, respectively.
TTE’s market share for global television unit shipments dropped to 9% in the second quarter, down from 11.2%. LG's share rose from 9.7% to 11 %. Samsung achieved the biggest gain, rising to 10% from 8.6%.
TTE’s loss was the result of a slowdown of television shipments in its home market in China, where the second quarter is slower due to the end of the Chinese New Year gift-giving season. Meanwhile, Samsung surged in the LCD- TV arena and LG took the top spots both in CRT and plasma display televisions.
“The shift at the top of the leader board reflects the radical changes throughout the television industry,” said Riddhi Patel, principal analyst for television systems. “The rapid decline in CRT television shipments is rippling through the market as flat-panel TVs become increasingly price competitive.
“Furthermore, DTV demand is beginning to take shape and more consumers are making the transition from analog in order to make their home-entertainment systems future proof," Patel added. “This also is causing consumers to buy more flat-panel televisions in the 40" size range, as opposed to 27" to 29" televisions a few years ago.
iSuppli predicted 5.7% growth in worldwide television unit shipments in 2006, to 187.7 million units. By 2010, the global television market will expand to 226.6 million units.”
CRT TVs will lose their historical dominance of the TV market in 2009, when they will account for about 42% of unit shipments, while LCD-TVs share will grow to 47.9% that year.
Competition sharpens
While the ranking among the top LCD-TV OEMs remained the same for the second quarter, a shake-up among the dominant manufacturers may be coming, as Sharp Electronics Corp. saw its nearest competitors come dangerously close to surpassing its leadership position.
Sharp had 15.2 percent of the LCD-TV unit shipment market share in the first quarter of 2006. This number dropped to 14.5 percent in the second quarter, drawing Sharp closer to the No. 2 position. Samsung increased its LCD- TV market share from 12.4 percent in the first quarter to 14.2 percent in the second quarter, only a fraction of a percentage point behind Sharp. Sony Corp. also increased its market share to 13.8 percent in the second quarter, up from 12.2 percent in the first.
iSuppli’s second quarter rankings for LCD television shipments are shown in Table 2 below and attached.
Factory Logic's software synchronizes production pace and material flow with customer demand.
The software resides on corporate IT systems and interfaces with the placement machines on the factory floor.
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