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News

Atlanta —The Atlanta Surface Mount Technology Association (SMTA) Expo will return to the Gwinnett Civic Center in Duluth on April 20. The free event will feature over 75 industry supplier exhibits, as well free technical presentations.

The morning sessions will feature a look at the electronics supply chain from Mike Buetow, editor-in-chief of Circuits Assembly, followed by a look at the realities and logistics of implementing Pb-free technologies, presented by industry expert (and Circuits Assembly columnist) Phil Zarrow. One of the afternoon sessions will focus on selective soldering techniques, and the second one on strategies for purchasing and increasing lead times in an RoHS environment.

The event also includes a free lunch on the trade show floor for pre-registrants, as well as a 10th anniversary celebration, sponsored by World Micro Components, Inc. A charity raffle to benefit The Joseph Sams School, a private, non-profit school in Fayetteville, is also planned.

Register in advance at: smta.org/education/vendor_days/vendor_days.cfm#ga

Delhi -- Flextronics will become a preferred manufacturing partner for SemIndia Inc., a chip manufacturing consortium working with Advanced Micro Devices, the Indian government, Government of Andhra Pradesh and the India Semiconductor Association.

Flextronics will manufacture electronic products for SemIndia and SemIndia will manufacture semiconductor chips for the various products that Flextronics manufactures in India (including chips for cell phones, set-top boxes and PCs).

Haapajärvi, Finland -- Flextronics has decided to close its printed circuit assembly plant in Haapajärvi, Finland, according to European news source Evertiq. Reportedly the plant’s 120 employees will be fired.

The closure is said to be due to high labour costs, so production is expected to transfer to a low-cost location. As Evertiq notes, the decision is surprising since the plant hired new staff last week. However, the company did lay off half of its Hungarian workforce (950 employees) in February.

SAN JOSE -- Electronic design automation (EDA) industry revenue for the fourth quarter was $1,253 million, up 5% over Q4 2004. For 2005, revenue totaled a record $4,575 million, or 3% more than 2004’s $4,437 million. The figures come from the EDA Consortium’s Market Statistics Service.

"The EDA industry continued to strengthen in the fourth quarter," said Walden C. Rhines, chairman of the EDA Consortium and chairman and CEO of Mentor Graphics. "Revenues were up in all regions and most product lines."

The largest tool category, computer-aided engineering (CAE), generated revenue of $542 million, 4% more than the same quarter last year. CAE revenue for the year stayed at $1,925 million.

LAFOX, IL -- Arthur Buckland has resigned as president, COO and board member of Richardson Electronics, effective immediately. According to the company, he is leaving to pursue personal interests. Edward Richardson will take his place until a permanent replacement is found.

The company also discovered errors in financial accounting at one of its Italian subsidiaries, according to a release on PR Newswire. The company has not yet determined the impact of these errors for any specific period, but it estimates that the errors will reduce stockholders' equity by approximately $3 million to $4 million.

While the company continues to evaluate the magnitude and impact of these errors, its financial statements for the previous three years and their interim periods should not be relied upon, according to the report. The company is evaluating the adequacy of its accounting for income taxes in certain foreign jurisdictions for prior periods and is in continuing discussions with the present and former auditors concerning these matters.

As a result of ongoing evaluation of these accounting errors, Richardson does not expect to file its Form 10-Q for its fiscal quarter ended March 4, 2006 by the filing deadline.

Tokyo -- JPCA Show 2006, sponsored by the Japan Electronics Packaging and Circuits Assoc., will take place May 31 – June 2 at Tokyo Big Sight. The event is concurrently held with the 2006 Microelectronics show, JPCA and JIEP keynote addresses and Jisso Technology Symposium.

Over 500 exhibitors will showcase technologies for an expected 100,000 international visitors. The keynotes will include Shigeaki Mizushima, group general manager, AVC Liquid Crystal Display Group of SHARP, who will address “SHARP’s Strategy for LCD Business.” Also, Takashi Shigematsu, managing officer of Toyota Motor Corp., will talk about “Current Situation and Future Prospects of Automotive Electronics.” Dr. Hayao Nakahara, a popular PWB consultant will make a presentation on “World Electronic Circuits Industries Today” on the final day.

An eco-Pavilion will introduce environmental friendly products and green technologies. AIST (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology) will also exhibit its latest development presentations at a special booth.

To register, visit jpca.jp

Taiwan -- BenQ has consolidated its Asia and Europe handset product houses in a move to speed up product launch time, according to Digitimes.

The product houses provide functions including technical product management, R&D, strategic procurement and supply chain management.

Jochen Eickholt, current head of BenQ mobile houses for Europe and Latin America and Irwin Chen, president of BenQ's wireless business unit, will jointly lead the new team, Digitimes said.

VANCOUVER -- Nam Tai Electronics has invested $30 million in the acquisition of machinery, new production lines, etc., to develop internal manufacturing operations.

To support its existing flexible printed circuit (FPC) subassembly business, the company has invested in FPC manufacturing, which involves the etching of a copper printed circuit onto a flexible plastic film and assisting customers in the design of the circuit layout.

San Jose -- With 116 billion ICs produced in 2005, the value of the worldwide IC packaging market was $23.1 billion in 2005, reports Electronic Trend Publications. Of this worldwide total, 37 billion ICs were assembled by contract packaging companies for a value of $9 billion.

The report predicts that the worldwide semiconductor industry will ship 193 billion ICs in 2010. At that time, the value of the IC packaging market will be $34.6 billion.

OAKLAND – Dell has announced it plans to triple the amount of product recovered from customers by the end of 2009 and released its annual sustainability report outlining current progress and future goals for the company’s corporate responsibility efforts.

The company’s environmental design plans were laid out in a new report. Other major goals include:

Introduction of a new supplier audit tool to help ensure good workplace practices throughout the company’s supply chain.
Global compliance with the RoHS directive.
Enhanced product energy efficiency through improvements in product design; and
Tripling the recovery and recycling of retired computers by the end of 2009.

Dell’s annual sustainability report for fiscal year 2006, which ended Feb. 3, outlines the company’s progress on environmental and social measurements and was issued today in conjunction with the Coalition of Environmentally Responsible Economies (Ceres) conference here.

Major achievements for the company’s recently completed fiscal year include:

· Launch of the company’s first high-volume, RoHS-compliant¹ desktop motherboards. Dell exceeded its goal of shipping three million of these motherboards per quarter by the fourth quarter of 2005.

· Recovery of 36.1 million kgs of product for reuse or recycling from customers and company operations. More than half of this total came from customers, increasing Dell’s recovery of product from customers by 72% over fiscal year 2005 volumes.

· Completion of Dell’s Supplier Self Assessment Questionnaire by 90% of targeted suppliers, exceeding the goal of 50% of target group completing self-assessment.

Earlier this year, Dell issued a chemical-use policy that set forth a plan to phase out the use of all brominated flame retardants in desktop, notebook and server plastic parts. Dell also plans to expand its existing ban on the use of brominated flame retardants in other products and peripherals developed after June 1, 2006.

In 2005 Dell shipped more than 8.4 million RoHS-compliant, Pb-free desktop motherboards.

Dell increased product recovered from customers for reuse or recycling, as measured by weight, by 72% over 2005. Dell has set a target to recover 125 million kilograms cumulatively by the end of 2009, nearly three times as much as Dell recovered this year.

Dell plans to launch customer product recovery services in Latin America and China this year.

A copy of the company’s sustainability report is available at dell.com/sustainabilityreport.

Shanghai -- Assembléon, a subsidiary of Royal Philips Electronics, and Yamaha IM are extending their pick-and-place partnership for another three years. The agreement covers the global SMD placement market, and includes development, manufacturing, marketing, sales and service.

The cooperation began in 1987, when Assembléon launched the companies' first mutual product, the CSM46. Since then, the partnership has been extended with continuous cooperation.

Together, Assembléon and Yamaha have grown to be the top supplier of pick-and-place machines worldwide in terms of units.

"Together, our two companies have the economies-of-scale and technical expertise that electronics assembly operations worldwide can rely on," added Leon Husson, CEO of Assembléon. "With today's PCBs characterized by continued miniaturization and a widening component mix, the winners in the market will be the manufacturers who can make their machines future proof, while still delivering a cost-down, quality-up process."

SAN JOSE -- Sanmina-SCI andShocking Technologies will jointly develop Shocking's specialty polymers for embedding ESD protection into internal layers of PCBs. The companies will work together to formulate voltage switchable dielectric materials for inclusion in Sanmina-SCI's PCB structures.

VSDM are specialty polymers that instantaneously change from insulators to conductors when a pre-programmed bi-directional voltage is applied.