FRANKFURT -- Siemens AG plans to divest its Electronic Assembly Systems unit by the end of September, the company said today. The unit employs about 2,100 workers and had reported sales in the "medium three-digit million euros range," a German newspaper reported.
ST. LOUIS -- LaBarge Inc. today raised its earnings guidance, announcing
that it expects financial results for its fiscal third quarter will
significantly top those of the last quarter and last year.
STRATHAM, NH – ITW has acquired Vitronics-Soltec from
Francisco Partners for an undisclosed sum. The deal creates the world’s largest
supplier, in revenues, of wave soldering equipment.
ITW plans to let the two units operate independent of each
other, although there is speculation that arrangement won't last for long.
SAN JOSE – North American-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted a 90-day average of $1.23 billion in orders in February, up 8% from the revised January figure and down 12% year-over-year.
SHANGHAI -- The electronics industry descended on Shanghai this week as four major
exhibitions staged a convergence of programs.
The week began
March 17 with the opening of the
11th annual Electronic Circuit World Convention. This is the first
time this conference has been hosted in Asia.
EL SEGUNDO, CA — Surprising fourth-quarter weakness in the memory chip market took the wind out of the sails of the global semiconductor market, causing 2007 growth to fall short of expectations, according to iSuppli Corp.
Global semiconductor market revenue grew 3.3% in 2007, iSuppli says, lower than the firm's 4.1% estimate in November.
For the quarter, semi revenues fell 0.5%, but were up 2.4% excluding memory.
Worldwide DRAM revenue fell 19.1% sequentially in the fourth quarter, below the November estimate of a 4.7% drop. NAND flash revenue declined 3.9%. Overall, memory chip revenue fell 11% sequentially.
“This was a complete role reversal for memory semiconductors compared to 2006,” said Dale Ford, senior vice president, market intelligence, for iSuppli. “During the second half of 2006, memory IC revenues helped to prop up the growth of the overall semiconductor industry. In 2007, the poor results for memory chips restrained overall market growth.”
Application-specific standard products and ASICs enjoyed the strongest performance of all semiconductor segments in 2007 with growth of 12.9%. Sony and Toshiba were the key drivers of growth in this segment due to sales of semiconductors for the PS3 game console. Optical semiconductors were up 7.4%, and discretes grew 4.2%. Overall, microprocessor revenue grew 2.1%.