Circuits Assembly Online Magazine - Features

Clinton, NY -- Indium Corp. has promoted Karl Pfluke to the position of regional sales manager for the Southeastern U.S. Pfluke will be responsible for the sales growth of PCB assembly, semiconductor packaging and power semiconductor packaging materials.

Pfluke has a degree in Manufacturing Engineering Technology and is certified as both a Powder Metallurgy Technologist with the MPIF and a Process Engineer with the SMTA. He is an active member of the IPC Solder Alloy Standards Development Group and has presented numerous technical papers. He joined Indium in 2001 as a technical support engineer and was named market development specialist in last year.

WASHINGTON — The National Association of Manufacturers has pledged support for the Senate confirmation of U.S. Rep. Christopher Cox (R-CA), President Bush’s nominee to be the next chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“Chris Cox is a great choice to lead the SEC,” declared NAM president John Engler.

OYSTER BAY, NY -- The global market for mobile location technologies is projected to rise from $23 billion in 2005 to surpass $39 billion by 2010, an average annual growth rate of 11.3%, according to a soon-to-be-released report from Business Communications Co.

Vehicle navigation systems and telematics, the largest application segments in 2004 with more than 44% of the market, should be superseded before 2010 by people and animal tracking, BCC said.

ELK GROVE VILLAGE, IL -- SigmaTron International, an electronic manufacturing services company, has completed the sale of its Las Vegas operation to Grand Products Nevada.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

In a statement, SigmaTron said the sale permits it to better focus on expanding its capabilities in higher growth manufacturing locations. SigmaTron will continue to sell into the gaming marketplace out of its remaining operations in different geographical locations and to sell different gaming products.

SigmaTron operates manufacturing facilities in Elk Grove Village; Acuna, Mexico; Fremont, CA; and Suzhou-Wujiang, China.

MUNICH -- Radio frequency microsystems will present one of the next major opportunities for MEMS, growing from $150 million in 2004 to more than $1.1 billion in 2009, according to a new study.

Jérémie Bouchaud of Germany based Wicht Technologie Consulting, the author of the report, said, "By 2004, the market had already exceeded the $110 million we predicted in our first RF MEMS report 3 years ago."

Currently, the bulk of the RF MEMS market services mobile telephony applications, with BAW duplexers and filters supplied largely by Agilent and Infineon.

A second mass market will emerge for consumer and IT applications in 2006. "There are great opportunities for spinoff applications in consumer and IT sectors following the initial focus on telecom applications," said Bouchaud. "Here, micro-mechanical resonators will be used not as filters but as timing devices."

Outside of mass markets, military applications offer the best opportunity, in particular for phased array antennas used in radar and communications. In terms of products, Bulk acoustic wave (BAW) devices and micromechanical resonators, followed by switches, will constitute the largest markets in 2009.

More than 60 companies are currently involved in RF MEMS manufacturing, and around a quarter will ship commercial products or samples in 2005.

SAN FRANCISCO – Look out, America. Taiwan has its eyes set on yet another of your industries.

The island nation’s EMS companies grew 35% year-on-year in 2004, 15 points faster than U.S.-based EMS firms, Deutsche Bank reported this week. The gains came even as growth rates slowed for computers and motherboards – traditionally the meat and potatoes of Taiwan’s EMS market.