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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.”

SANTA CLARA, CA -- More than 400 industry insiders gathered here yesterday for Microsoft's first Global High Tech Summit, a forum that looked at challenges and trends facing high tech manufacturing.

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.