News
SAN JOSE, Dec. 16 -- The number of PCs in use worldwide will reach almost 1.3 billion by the end of the decade, up from about 575 million today. In a new study, Forrester Research claims markets in Europe, the U.S. and Asia have reached maturity and that the bulk of the growth will come from emerging regions like China, Russia and India.
According to Forrester, emerging markets will account for 566 million new PCs in use by the end of 2010. The mature regions' consumption: 150 million new PCs in use. (Contrary to other news reports, the study reflects new PCs in use, not sales of PCs overall -- which would be a much higher number.)
Moreover, Western PC vendors won't dominate in those markets in the long term, Forrester says. The firm forecasts PC makers like Lenovo Group in China, which just announced the purchase of IBM's PC division, and Aquarius in Russia will gain share because they are better positioned to tailor the PC form factor, price points and applications to their local markets.
For its report Forrester studied 16 emerging markets representing 62% of the world's population.
China will gain the most new PC users, 178 million, while India will gain 80 million and Indonesia 40 million, the study says. According to Forrester, India's PC adoption -- currently one of the lowest rates in the world -- will grow 37% annually through 2010. Indonesia's growth rate will be 40% per year.
Of the 16 emerging markets, Mexico will have the deepest PC penetration as a percentage of population: 46 PCs per every 100 people.
LONDON, Dec. 16 -- The U.K. government has made available a series of publications on the WEEE and RoHS Directives, including best practice case studies.
The guidance is available for free at www.envirowise.gov.uk/electronics.
Among the suggestions:
- Talk to, or join, a recycling industry consortium.
- Talk to a recycler about the requirements and costs of recycling your own product, with a view to re-design.
- Find out what happens at the end-of-life for your product.
- Establish a dialogue with distributors and retailers to establish if your own take-back scheme is possible, or what the best options are for your business.
- Look at current contracts, both for equipment used and sold, to identify any possible transferral of responsibility.
- Evaluate customer opinions about who is responsible for WEEE and see if it is possible to negotiate
- Evaluate B2B takeback obligations if selling equipment to businesses that are likely to have old stock which will need to be collected and recycled.
- Re-evaluate your business model.
- Identify any market opportunities, such as recycling, logistics.
- Consider a move from a selling to a renting business model.
- Evaluate design and re-design opportunities.
For additional information:
- U.K.'s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), RoHS guidelines: http://www.dti.gov.uk/sustainability/weee/
- KPMG report on WEEE: www.dti.gov.uk/sustainability/weee/kpmgreport.pdf
- DTI commissioned assessment on WEEE strategies in other countries: www.dti.gov.uk/sustainability/weee/aeatreport.pdf
- DTI RoHS compliance reports: ROHS Compliance Executive Summary.pdf: www.dti.gov.uk/sustainability/weee/; ROHS Compliance Full Report.pdf: www.dti.gov.uk/sustainability/weee/
- Centre for Sustainable Design: www.cfsd.org.uk
- Sustainable Design Network: www.sustainabledesignnet.org.uk
- EC's Integrated Product Policy: www.europa.eu.int/comm/environment/ipp/home.htm
- United Nations UNIDO training kit on Cleaner Production: www.unido.org/doc/9753
- Lifecycle analysis tools: www.pre.nl
- Waste Resource and Action Programme: www.wrap.org.uk
- Intellect: www.intellectuk.org/campaigns/environment/default.asp
- Unep sustainable consumption: www.uneptie.org/pc/sustain
- Environment Agency life cycle analysis tool: www.environment-agency.gov.uk
- Sustainable Business: www.sustainablebusiness.com
- Design Council: www.design-council.org.uk
HOUSTON, Dec. 15, 2004 — Microtek Inc. (microtek.co.jp/english/) has chosen BP Microsystems' (bpmicro.com) equipment for a new programming services facility in Isehara, Kanagawa, Japan.
The 130-employee company plans and designs parts that are then commissioned for manufacture in separate facilities. It prefers automated programming systems because of reduced bent leads during handling and better ESD isolation. Additionally, it offers visual inspection services and component marking services.
Microtek's new facility, the Atsugi Programming Center, uses programmers, vision inspection machines and marking machines. The company anticipates programming over six million devices this year.
Dykes will continue to advise Flextronics through March.
"I cannot begin to tell you how important Bob has been to the development of Flextronics as a leading company in the EMS industry, both as a director and as CFO," said Michael Marks, chief executive. "Bob served as my most trusted advisor during the rapid development of the company over the past seven years."
Smach has been Flextronics senior vice president of finance since its acquisition of the Dii Group in April 2000.
HP spends an estimated $43 billion each year --- the largest in the world -- on supply chain procurement. The company seeks ongoing supply chain cost reductions of the $1 billion to $1.3 billion annually through 2007, DB wrote, the bulk expected to come from lower procurement costs.
HP, which sources 88% of its' spend with its top 40 suppliers, has plans to shrink its supplier base even more. In doing so, the firm will retake control of various purchasing that the company had previously outsourced to EMS firms, DB wrote.
HP is demanding its EMS firms compete on their manufacturing capabilities, rather than procurement. "While HP implemented this process over a year ago to get better clarity into its costs (and eliminate the CMs' profit from material cost arbitrage), we believe HP is accelerating this move and continuing to pressure pricing at the EMS level," DB analyst Chris Whitmore wrote.
Furthermore, the company is pushing toward greater standardization across its hardware platform, reducing the number of parts it uses.
PARIS, Dec. 13 -- LG Electronics last week opened an R&D center here and will staff it with more than 100 researchers, part of its strategy to crack the top 3 of the handset industry market by 2006.
At the center, LG will work on multimedia features for its next-generation (4G) GSM and WCDMA phones. The company will also use the location to enhance its links with major European service providers like Vodafone, Hutchison, T-Mobile and Orange .
LG also has R&D centers in San Diego, Beijing, Bangalore and Moscow.
In a statement, James Kim, president for European Headquarters, said, "[T]he establishment of R&D center in Europe has created an environment in which we can efficiently respond to R&D issues in the region. We will position our research center as the R&D hub penetrating European mobile phone market by increasing the number of researchers by more than 100-plus people next year."
Merix will buy Data Circuit Systems Inc., a provider of quickturn board fabrication services, for a total purchase price of $43 million, consisting of $41 million in cash and a $2 million note. The move effectively triples Merix's customer base.
For its fiscal year ended Sept. 30, Data Circuit Systems had net income of $2.3 million on sales of $27.7 million. The firm posted an EBITDA of $5.8 million.
In a press statement, Merix chairman and chief executive Mark Hollinger said, "Merix has been focused on growing and enhancing its quickturn business for some time. While we have made significant progress in this endeavor, this combination enhances our market opportunity by providing added scale, tripling our customer base, diversifying our end markets, adding experienced rep firms to complement our direct sales force, and augmenting our quickturn service offering to include 24 hour turnaround."
Delays are still being reported at transit hubs and importers continue to rush shipments in advance of unfilled quotas, Trans Global Logistics said in an email note.
Fuel surcharges and freight rates remain high as stabilizing oil prices and moderating shipping demand have been offset by the weak U.S. dollar. Today, OPEC announced a $1 per barrel increase for oil.
Activity remains strong at Taipei and Shanghai, where new customs clearance procedures went into effect Dec. 1 and products to be shipped are reportedly delayed up to three days.
China is expected to see a bump in activity in the next four weeks, leading up to the Chinese New Year on Feb. 9. "We expect markets in China to be very active in early January as importers rush to take advantage of quota elimination on many apparel categories. Export activity will also spike in early February because Chinese factories will shut down during the weeklong Lunar New Year holiday," Trans Global wrote.
In a press statement Siemens L&A EA chief executive Tilo Brandis said, "The partnership between ASYS and Siemens is defined by developing creative, flexible solutions and the permanent optimization of the business relationship."
The relationship between ASYS and Siemens dates to 1995. In 1997 ASYS designed and developed a lift system for connecting a line of Siemens' placement systems in a parallel manner. To date ASYS has supplied more than 1,000 of the systems to Siemens.
The Siplace Partnership Award recognizes business partners that benefit users of Siemens' products or services.
The electronics company has chosen a SnAgCuIn alloy for its high-reliability communications and medical gear and larger PCBs, according to Nikkei Shinbum News.
The company chose the solder for its melting temperature, tensile strength, thermal cycling and aging characteristics, the report said. SnAgCuIn melts at 204C, well below the point of other lead-free alloys. The alloy is supplied by Singapore Asahi Chemical and Solder Industries Ltd.
According to the report, another lead-free alloy -- this one SnZn -- failed to pass Hitachi's tests.
Hitachi said that while indium costs more than other metals, the price point is "only 20 to 30%" higher and that all lead-free alloys cost more than SnPb solder.
Japanese OEMs have been early adopters of lead-free alloys. According to the report, NEC, Sharp and Fujitsu use SnZn, while Panasonic uses SnAgBiIn.
The award honors SMTA members who stand out as leaders within the association.
In a press release, SMTA said Tsoi's devoted hours of time, personal financial support and leadership so that colleagues could benefit from SMTA membership via a local chapter. He was the first student from China to earn SMTA Certification and joined other chapter officers in Minneapolis for a Leadership Forum last March.
Frank, of FeinFocus GmbH, received the award for his paper "Detecting and Analyzing Wafer Bump Voids with X-ray Inspection," in which he disclosed an x-ray imaging technology said to detect and measure voids within solder bumps on chips. The paper also revealed software that determines component viability based on preset threshold values.
The event was sponsored by SMTA. Papers detailed leading-edge IC packaging and test technologies with special emphasis on 3D stacked packaging.
The x-ray inspection system detailed in Frank's paper converts 3D voids to measurable 2D images, enabling the system to calculate the ratio of the size of the void within a solder bump to the total mass of the ball. The system can also determine the largest linear distance between two points in the void and compare the result with the diameter of the ball.
The paper will soon be online in at smta.org.
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