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News

NEW YORK -- Dover Corp. reported fourth-quarter sales rose 19% to $1.61 billion over last year. For the period ended Dec. 31, earnings from continuing operations rose 30% to $125.1 million, while net earnings were $116.1 million.

For the year Dover had revenue of $6.08 billion, up 17%, and earnings from continuing operations of $474.5 million, up 21%.

WASHINGTON -- December orders for manufactured durable goods rose 1.3%, the U.S. Census Bureau reported. It was the highest mark since Census Bureau began tracking the data in 1992.

Shipments were up 3.5%, the fourth hike in the past five months, also reaching their highest level since 1992.

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – The SMTA is accepting applications through April 15 for its $5,000 Hutchins Educational Grant. Established in memory of past SMTA president Dr. Charles Hutchins and co-sponsored by Circuits Assembly, the annual award goes to a graduate-level student doing research in electronic assembly or electronics packaging.

Students can download and submit the entry form (available at smta.org/hutchins/hutchins.cfm), along with current academic transcripts, a letter of recommendation, a resume and a one-page thesis research abstract.

Presented annually at the SMTA International Conference, the grant is intended for the purchase of technical books and research materials, participation in electronics conferences and for living expenses if necessary.

The 2005 recipient was Leila Jannesari Ladani, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland, for her project: "Effect of Voids Caused By Manufacturing Variation on the Thermo-mechanical Durability of Sn3.8Ag0.7Cu Solders."

SAN FRANCISCO – Some of the biggest names in computing have committed a collective $10 billion toward standardizing the Itanium platform.

Senior executives from a number of top firms who met yesterday in San Francisco to map out a strategy for Itanium say they are targeting the mission-critical computing market.

The announcement came at the Itanium Solutions Alliance’s first Executive League meeting. Representatives came from Bull, Fujitsu, Fujitsu-Siemens Computers, Hitachi, HP, Intel, NEC, SGI and Unisys.

Itanium platform revenue currently makes up 58% of Sun's SPARC and 33% of IBM's Power2. Over 6,000 applications are said to be running the architecture.

In a statement IDC group vice president and general manager Vernon Turner said, “Itanium solution delivery to mission critical environments represent a new business model for enterprise and technical computing users bringing choice of hardware platform, operating system, and applications to environments which heretofore have been limited by proprietary vertical solution stacks. A change this substantial takes collective industry commitment and investment.”

The investment is comprised of planned funding of research and development, capital expenditures, sales and marketing, and ISV enabling activities.

Itanium application support has doubled within the past 12 months, the Alliance said in a press release.

The Alliance was founded last September, bringing together companies seeking to accelerate Itanium solution deployments.

WILSONVILLE, OR – Mentor Graphics announced record fourth quarter revenue of $221.3 million, up 3% from the prior fourth quarter. Bookings were up more than 5% from Q4 2004.

"We were pleased to see continued growth in bookings in the fourth quarter of 2005, especially considering the tough comparison to last year's fourth quarter growth of more than 35%," Walden C. Rhines, chairman and CEO, said in a press release. "Renewals showed strong growth, with contract values up nearly 30% over prior contract levels. Mentor's book-to-bill ratio was positive for the year, and the fourth quarter was the highest quarterly book-to-bill ratio since 1996."

Three of the four major product categories set quarterly and annual bookings records. Compared to Q4 2004, bookings grew 50% in Integrated Systems Design, 15% in IC Design to Silicon and 20% in New and Emerging.

Mentor's Questa verification platform, launched in May, was installed in over 1,000 seats installed by the fourth quarter. TestKompress bookings more than doubled during the year, while automotive products grew 40%. Strength in FPGA-related products like synthesis and I/O Designer helped increase bookings in the Integrated Systems Design category.

Calibre resolution enhancement technology continued to expand with annual bookings growth of 25%. Calibre DFM bookings grew 1000% over 2004 thanks to two new product launches.

Mentor's automotive solution was adopted at Shanghai Motors. The resulting orders were the largest Mentor has ever received from China.

North America and Europe both saw bookings up 20% over Q4 last year. Japan was weaker with bookings down 35%, while the Pacific Rim bookings dropped 5% over the year ago levels.

FRAMINGHAM, MA — The fourth quarter of 2005 saw new records for mobile phone shipments, largely driven by vendors stocking the channels in time for the holiday season. According to IDC, worldwide mobile phone shipments rose 19.3% year over year and increased sequentially 16.8%, good for reach a quarterly record of 245.2 million units.

An analyst with the firm said the quarter portends solid growth into 2006.

ST. GALLEN, SWITZERLAND – Companies exporting electronics to Switzerland should be advised of a new regulation for chemicals called the ChemRRV. According to a senior engineer at the EMPA Technology and Society Laboratory, ChemRRV bans the same substances outlawed in the RoHS directive.

SAN JOSE -- Sanmina-SCI Corp. last night reported first-quarter revenue rose 3.5% to $2.86 billion sequentially but fell 12% year-on-year.

For the quarter ended Dec. 31, the GAAP net income was up 300% to $21.2 million sequentially but fell 13% from a year ago. The company received a one-time income tax adjustment of $64 million.

SINGAPORE -- Tiny in size but strategically vital, Singapore is eyeing big gains in electronics manufacturing even as its competitors in Southeast Asia grow by the month.

In a report released this week Sinagpore's Electronics Development Board agency set a target of $5 billion in new manufacturing investments for 2006 and is looking to double manufacturing output to $185 billion by 2018.

In 2005, the EBD said, the nation attracted about $5.2 billion worth of new fixed-asset investment commitments for manufacturing, up 2.4% over 2004. Electronics accounted for over half of these new commitments, and are expected to make up half of the 16,700 new manufacturing jobs expected.

Major investments included semiconductor wafer fabs and assembly and testing including a Micron plant expansion, a new $50-million wafer-level packaging plant by Schott Electronics, and a massive $1.2 billion, two-year commitment from STMicroelectronics.

CAMBRIDGE, U.K. -- Sales of RFID tags and related products will hit $2.71 billion this year, and rise to $12.35 billon by 2010, says research firm IDTechEx.

The firm says 600 million tags were sold in 2005, and 1.3 billion tags will be sold this year. Of that, the majority will be used for a range of diverse markets from baggage and passports to contactless payment cards and drugs. About 500 million RFID smart labels will be used for pallet and case level tagging.

In the short term large “closed loop” markets requiring high value RFID will remain very profitable and companies will seek to position themselves as the leader in hardware and integration in different vertical market segments, IDTechEx said.

Many markets are being created, such as real-time location systems using active RFID. Growth in passive RFID will be driven by the tagging of high volume items - notably consumer goods, drugs and postal packages, IDTechEx said.

The firm also predicts more use of different frequencies and increased interest in high frequency (13.56 MHz) tags and systems.

TORONTO -- Celestica today reported fourth-quarter revenue of $2.08 billion, down 11% from last year. The GAAP loss for the December quarter narrowed to $28 million, from $810 million a year ago.

ST. LOUIS -- LaBarge Inc. has been awarded a contract worth more than $18 million by L-3 Communications to produce subassemblies for an airline checked-baggage screening system. The agreement is in addition to a contract L-3 awarded LaBarge last spring, and expands the company's involvement in the program to the production of higher-level electronic assemblies.