Industry News
Ducommun Inc. announced that its Ducommun Technologies Inc. (DTI) subsidiary has acquired the capital stock of WiseWave Technologies Inc., a privately held company based in Torrance, CA. WiseWave is a manufacturer of custom microwave and millimeter-wave products for both aerospace and non-aerospace applications. WiseWave’s sales for the last twelve months were approximately $4.4 M. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The principal shareholders, Yonghui Shu and Xiaoxin Gu, will remain with the business. Following the acquisition the WiseWave business will be integrated with DTI’s Carson, CA microwave business.
Aeroflex announced that an agreement has been reached with Kenwood USA for providing advanced P25 testing solutions to Kenwood dealers. Under this program, Kenwood dealers will be able to lease the Aeroflex 2975 Advanced P25 radio test system at special discount rates. The 2975 will be used in the installation, test and alignment of P25 and other radio systems currently fielded and in development from Kenwood.
TTP Communications plc and Analog Devices Inc. (ADI) announced that TTPCom’s subsidiary, TTPCom Ltd., has reached an agreement with ADI — its long time collaborator in the development of silicon and software for cellular phones — under which TTPCom will transfer to ADI intellectual property, engineering resources and related assets associated with the support and customization of TTPCom GSM/GPRS/EDGE modem software specifically for use on ADI products. The agreement grants ADI the right to directly distribute TTPCom’s modem software for use on ADI SoftFone baseband products and provides development rights for AJAR, TTPCom’s advanced applications platform. This agreement is designed to simplify wireless device development for customers by consolidating the resources involved in the licensing and customization of SoftFone-based hardware and software at one company, ADI.
Agilent Technologies Inc. announced a reorganization of its electronic measurements group, merging the company’s operations support systems group with two other existing businesses within EMG. David Churchill, Agilent’s vice president and general manager of the Design Validation Division, will head the new business unit, named Network and Digital Solutions. Before joining Agilent in 2005, Churchill was the senior vice president and general manager, communications and video business unit, at Tektronix.
Vishay Intertechnology Inc. announced that its group of five Vishay-owned and independent Precision Centers is available to serve the needs of design engineers, purchasing agents and others looking for small quantities of Vishay ultra-high-precision Bulk Metal® foil resistors. The Precision Centers located in Malvern, PA; Sterling, MA; Houston, TX; St. Paul, MN; and Ontario, CA use standard Vishay-approved manufacturing procedures. The facilities provide delivery in up to three days, do not have any minimum-order requirements and will provide resistors at any tolerance available within published resistance ranges.
Nu Horizons Electronics Corp., a global distributor of advanced technology active components and system solutions, continues to focus its efforts on expanding the organization’s Asia Pacific operations by adding technical and sales support in Nanjing and Chengdu, China. In addition, over recent months, the company has established new or upgraded facilities in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Hong Kong, Seoul, Bangkok and Bangalore.
Pendulum Instruments has further expanded its international activities. The company has its headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, with subsidiaries in Oakland, CA and also St. Petersburg, Russia. International sales are performed via some 80 distributors around the world. The company has established a new office in Beijing, China, to support the company’s distributors in China and identify opportunities within the Chinese market. The office is located at Pendulum Instruments, China, Room 540A, No. 6 Xi Zhi Men Wai Da jie, Xi Cheng District, Beijing 100044, PRC, China +86 683 11 857 or e-mail: rong.zheng@pendulum-instruments.cn.
Elcoteq SE, a global provider of electronics manufacturing services for the communications technology industry, announced its move to new facilities in Manaus, Brazil and Juarez, Mexico. Relocating to these new premises enhances the manufacturing and office space and enables Elcoteq to provide state of the art services to its present and future customers in the Americas. The company’s other sites in the Americas are located in Monterrey, Mexico and in Texas.
Aperto Networks announced a strategic alliance with Allied Telesis to sell Aperto Networks’ carrier-grade PacketMAX™ solutions, starting with the 2.5 GHz product supply for the Japanese market.
RF Monolithics Inc. announced that it has begun shipping evaluation kits for its recently announced TRC101, TXC100, TXC101, TXC102 and RXC101 single chip, feature rich, transceiver, transmitters and receiver IC products. The evaluation boards, available in various frequencies, are designed to serve as standalone platforms and allow for complete evaluation of the RFICs without the need to develop code for a microcontroller.
Circuit Components Inc. (CCI) announced that the company’s line of Rigid/Bus“ board stiffeners are RoHS compliant. RoHS compliance takes effect this month and will require all manufacturers of electronic and electrical equipment sold in Europe to be in compliance with the EU’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive that mandates reduction of six hazardous substances.
Lexycom Technologies Inc., a manufacturer of software defined radios, announced it has implemented the necessary internal and external process changes to ensure a smooth and seamless transition into being RoHS compliant.
picoChip and Airspan Networks announced complete WiMAX Forum certification of Airspan’s MacroMAX basestation for the 3.5 GHz FDD profile. The MacroMAX is powered by picoChip’s software upgradeable architecture, as are Airspan’s HiperMAX and MicroMAX-SDR basestation models, which are expected to achieve certified status during 2006. All three products can support both 256 OFDM and SOFDMA PHYs.
Teledyne Relays has been recognized as one of the Top Preferred Suppliers for 2006 by Rockwell Collins. Teledyne Relays, a producer of switching products, was cited for performance in meeting delivery schedules and product quality. The company was also recognized for design and engineering support and the teamwork demonstrated with Rockwell Collins.
Evans Capacitor Co. has been awarded a US Chamber of Commerce Small Business Blue Ribbon award. Evans Capacitor developed and now manufactures advanced capacitors for aerospace and defense applications. This award, sponsored by AIG, was designed to honor businesses that showed excellence in a variety of selection criteria, including financial performance and business history, staff training and motivation, community involvement, customer service and business planning.
Printed Circuits Corp., a specialist in design, fabrication, assembly, box build, repair and testing of printed circuit boards in prototype to production quantities, announced its facility has received SDB/8a certification from SBA.
Contracts
Herley Industries Inc. announced that it has received a $2 M contract award to provide the avionics for an advanced domestic target program. This contract represents a follow-on order to Micro Systems Inc., Herley’s Center of Excellence for all command and control systems.
Planar Electronics Technology (PET) has won a $1.4 M production contract for an Airborne Military Surveillance RF Distribution Subsystem. This production contact was awarded by a prime US Government Contractor that PET has been working with on the design and development of this subsystem.
EMS SATCOM, a division of EMS Technologies Inc., reports that Bombardier Aerospace has selected the company’s eNfusion™ AMT-3800 high gain antenna as an approved factory option of its ultra long range Global™ Express XRS and super large Bombardier Global 5000™ business jets. The AMT-3800 antenna joins the company’s AMT-50 tail-mounted high gain antenna as an option available to aircraft purchasers.
Andrew Corp. has won a strategic exclusive development and production contract from L-3 Communications–Narda Satellite Networks for a new 3.9 meter flyaway tactical satellite earth station antenna. The award is the first for Andrew’s new military satellite communications product line.
CSR plc announced that it has chosen Anritsu’s MT8852B EDR test set for integration into its “Bluetooth Characterization Systems” for automated testing of standard rate and EDR Bluetooth devices. The MT8852B Bluetooth EDR test set fully implements v2.0 standard test mode signaling. This will expedite the test and verification of new designs from CSR.
Tektronix Inc., a worldwide provider of test, measurement and monitoring instrumentation, announced that Sony Corp. has adopted Tektronix Real-Time Spectrum Analyzers (RTSA) and RFID analysis software developed for measuring and analyzing communication conditions between a reader/writer and an IC card equipped with Sony FeliCa contactless IC card technology. This combination of application specific software and Tektronix Real-Time Spectrum Analyzers has helped Sony to quickly measure and troubleshoot communication conditions, and create consistent and reproducible results.
Financial News
Silicon Laboratories Inc. reports sales of $114.5 M for the first quarter of 2006, compared to $104.8 M for the same period in 2005. Net income for the quarter was $11 M ($0.19/per diluted share), compared to a net income of $17.4 M ($0.31/per diluted share) for the first quarter of last year.
ANADIGICS Inc. reports sales of $35.7 M for the first quarter of 2006 ended April 1, 2006, compared to $21.8 M for the same period in 2005. Net loss for the quarter was $4.6 M ($0.12/per share), compared to a net loss of $11.5 M ($0.34/per share) for the first quarter of last year.
Ansoft Corp. reports sales of $24.7 M for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2006 ended April 30, 2006, compared to $21.7 M for the same period in 2005. Net income for the quarter was $8.3 M ($0.32/per diluted share), compared to a net income of $4.7 M ($0.18/per diluted share) for the fourth quarter of last year.
WJ Communications Inc. reports sales of $12.3 M for the first quarter of 2006 ended April 2, 2006, compared to $7.8 M for the same period in 2005. Net loss for the quarter was $2.4 M ($0.04/per share), compared to a net loss of $7.7 M ($0.12/per share) for the first quarter of last year.
Merrimac Industries Inc. reports sales of $6.2 M for the first quarter of 2006 ended April 1, 2006, compared to $7.3 M for the same period in 2005. Net loss for the quarter was $441,000 ($0.14/per share), compared to a net income of $84,000 ($0.03/per share) for the first quarter of last year.
Alistair Manley
Superconductor Technologies Inc. reports sales of $4.8 M for the first quarter ended April 1, 2006, compared to $4.4 M for the same period in 2005. Net loss for the first quarter was $3.2 M ($0.26/per diluted share), compared to a net loss of $5.5 M ($0.51/per diluted share) for the first quarter of last year.
New Market Entry
Fairchild Semiconductor marks its entrance into the high performance amplifier market with five operational amplifiers (op amps). The 210 MHz FHP3x50 and the 50 MHz FHP3x30 families allow designers to target a broad range of high definition (HD) and standard definition (SD) video applications including set-top boxes, digital TVs and audio/video amplifiers. These two product families were developed with Fairchild’s new proprietary “BCP6T” technology. Fairchild’s high performance op amps allow video designers to achieve their dual objectives of delivering good amplifier performance and maintaining low power consumption.
Linda Wood
Personnel
ARRIS announced the appointment of Charles Cheevers to the role of CTO, Europe. Cheevers will also continue in his role as vice president of engineering for the ARRIS Cadant® C3™ CMTS and Keystone™ D5™ DMTS products and as general manager of the ARRIS R&D Center in Cork, Ireland. The addition of the European CTO role to Cheevers’ responsibilities, coupled with the company’s large technology presence in Europe, will increase the company’s ability to serve the needs of European MSOs in cable technology.
SiGe Semiconductor announced that Alistair Manley has been promoted from senior director of marketing to vice president, partner development. Leveraging over 34 years experience in business development, marketing and sales, Manley will manage worldwide development and communication activities for the company’s strategic reference design partners.
Crane Aerospace & Electronics, a segment of Crane Co., has appointed Linda Wood as electronics group vice president of human resources. In this capacity, Wood will lead the intellectual capital process and all human resource functions for the electronics group. She will be located in Redmond, WA. Wood joined the company in 1996 as manager of employee benefits and payroll for ELDEC, one of the brands which comprise Crane Aerospace & Electronics. In 2002, she was promoted to the position of director of compensation and benefits for Crane Co.
Paul Jeffs
Paul Jeffs has been appointed to the role of director of European field marketing for Anritsu. He will lead the marketing operation in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for all the company’s test and measurement and service assurance products, across all markets. These include: wireless, wired and IP equipment vendors, and network operators in both the fixed-line and wireless sectors. Jeff’s role will be to promote the end-to-end solutions that include the company’s traditional test and measurement tools and the service assurance solutions historically offered by NetTest.
Sabritec has welcomed Amir Saket as the company’s director of operations. In this position, Saket is responsible for developing and maintaining manufacturing business plans that support customer requirements. He will ensure that objectives for product delivery, production costs and quality requirements are met. Saket will drive lean initiatives in operations and will champion various continuous improvement projects. He has over 18 years experience in all facets of connector operations. In related news, Fredrik Thorell has joined the company as applications engineer. In this position, Thorell will act as the liaison between the customer and engineering department. He will provide commercial and technical product support and recommend appropriate application specific interconnect solutions to the US and European markets. Prior to joining Sabritec, Thorell had worked as a components and design engineer for con-nectors, back shells, cables and fiber optic interconnects, and was the technical advisor to production, purchasing, design and planning.
Amir Saket
Kyocera America Inc. announced several promotions. Steve Bowen, formerly executive account manager, has been promoted to district sales manager for the newly established Phoenix District Sales Office, responsible for managing the office’s sales activities and personnel. Tony Soldano, formerly executive account manager, has been promoted to district sales manager for the newly established East Fishkill sales office, responsible for managing the office’s sales activities and personnel. Antonio Pagkalinawan, formerly sales engineer, has been promoted to district sales manager of the New Jersey District, responsible for managing the office’s sales activities and personnel. Josh Castleberry, formerly sales engineer, has been promoted to sales product manager for electro-optical products, responsible for EO sales in the US. Keith Fujii, formerly layer division program manager, has been promoted to layer division design manager. Nancy Platon, formerly senior staff accountant, has been promoted to manager of accounts payable and general ledger. Richard Sabo, formerly junior accountant, has been promoted to staff accountant and assumed the additional responsibilities of import administration.
MICA Microwave has appointed Dennis Deck as the company’s sales and marketing manager. Deck will manage the company’s sales team and have direct responsibility for western states regional sales, and far eastern region, which includes China, India, Japan and Singapore. He has over 20 years of experience in the microwave industry, which includes a sales history specializing in microwave components.
Fredrik Thorell
Rep Appointments
Aeroflex/Weinschel Inc. announced that it has signed an exclusive agreement with Cain-Sweet Co. to expand the company’s territory as a manufacturers representative to now include Canada. Cain-Sweet has represented Aeroflex/Weinschel in the Pacific Northwest and has offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Portland and Seattle.
MITEQ Inc., a supplier of RF and microwave components, has appointed MHz Marketing Inc., Laurel, MD, as its exclusive sales representative in Virginia, Maryland, eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey. MHz Marketing can be reached at (301) 317-5001.
Pulse,® a Technitrol company, announced that the company has expanded its sales channels in North America, including Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico through its distributor Digi-Key. Pulse products can be purchased directly from Digi-Key and are featured in its print and on-line catalog. Digi-Key can fulfill the prototype and production needs for both Pulse’s and Digi-Key’s widespread customer bases.
Web site
Keithley Instruments Inc. has co-developed and sponsored a Nanotechnology Test Weblog, or Blog, designed exclusively for engineers and researchers dealing with electrical testing issues in the field of nanotechnology and MEMS. The Nanotest Weblog keeps visitors abreast of the latest news in the nanotechnology and MEMS industry through frequent posts of technical and business developments. The weblog is coordinated by Nanotech Briefs magazine and can be accessed directly at www.nanotestblog.com.