TOKYO -- As predicted by Circuits Assembly last year, following its promotion of entertainment guru Howard Stringer Sony Corp. has upped outsourcing of its electronics products. It recently signed a deal with Premier Image Technology of Taiwan, and is reportedly  in talks with other Taiwanese companies, including Ability Enterprise Co., Asia Optical Co., and Altek. A decision is expected by March.

Altek also builds product for Kodak and HP. Asia Optical builds for Olympus, and Ability makes digital cameras for Samsung and Casio. 

Sanyo is leading digital camera vendor, shipping some 13 million units this year.

PALO ALTO, CA -- The sale of Agilent Technologies' semiconductor chip division to a pair of private equity firms is complete. The $2.6 billion acquisition by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Silver Lake Partners closed yesterday, creating a new company with some $1.8 billion in revenue this year.

The new company will be known as Avago Technologies and be based in San Jose and Singapore. Avago will have 6,500 employees, including 500 in San Jose. No layoffs are expected.

Dick Chang, who ran Agilent's chip division before the buyout, is the new CEO. He said Avago expects sales to grow about 5% next year.

Avago has also agreed to divest its storage chip business to PMC-Sierra in a deal worth $425 million.

SAN JOSE – Worldwide sales of semiconductors surpassed $20 billion in October, a new milestone for the industry, according to SIA. Sales rose 6.75% from October 2004 and 2.5% sequentially.

WASHINGTON, DC - For the second consecutive month U.S. manufacturing created jobs in November, according to a Dec. 2 employment report from the Labor Department.

"That's the first time that's happened in more than a year," noted National Association of Manufacturers chief economist David Huether.

With 215,000 new non-farm jobs created across all economic sectors last month, Huether observed, "The overall economy's strong underpinnings have helped it weather the Gulf storms that battered employment in September and October. That manufacturing followed up a gain of 15,000 jobs in October with 11,000 more in November suggests that solid growth in orders and production reported earlier this week will keep U.S. industry in its steady recovery mode into next year."

Huether said that as the overall unemployment rate held steady at 5%, U.S. manufacturing boosted employment to 14.27 million workers. "Of course," he added, "we've barely made a dent in recovering the 3 million jobs we lost in the last recession."

While the job gains in October largely reflected a return to work by striking aerospace workers, November's gains were spread throughout most durable goods sectors. "Considering last month's 3.4% rise in durable goods orders, it looks like business investment is accelerating, and that bodes well for additional manufacturing job creation in coming months," Huether said.

WASHINGTON – The National Association of Manufacturers expressed strong disappointment that the latest Treasury Report to Congress did not cite China for currency manipulation. “We felt that Secretary [John] Snow’s comments in May made it very clear that China had to make a significant move in its currency’s value to avoid being cited in this report,” said NAM president John Engler. The yuan has appreciated just 0.3% since China announced a revaluation of its currency in July.