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TALLIN, ESTONIA -- Elcoteq, the world's 12th largest EMS company, plans to rehire up to 300 workers at its plant here, a company’s spokeswoman said. "We expect our orders to increase and could have a demand for new workforce,” the spokeswoman said.

PLYMOUTH, WI – ERSA has named Ernie Grice vice president of sales for the firm’s North American operations.

Grice will manage sales and marketing of all product areas, including screen and stencil printers, reflow, wave and selective soldering machines, rework, BGA inspection and hand tools.

He has worked for ERSA for six years and has 20 years’ experience in the electronics manufacturing industry.

PORTSMOUTH, ENGLAND – Growth in shipments of automotive hard disc drives could slow in the late stages of the next decade, as shipments of systems featuring high-density flash memory begin to rise, says researcher Semicast.

In comparison to other consumer goods, such as personal video recorders, portable media players and laptop computers, the storage capacity of automotive entertainment systems, especially embedded navigation systems, has risen only slowly in recent years, according to the firm. For example, many factory fitted navigation systems offered in 2008 have a storage capacity of around 20GB, which is the same as the aftermarket HDD navigation systems originally introduced by suppliers such as Alpine and Pioneer to the Japanese market in 2001.

The phenomenal increase in the storage capacity of many consumer goods has typically been driven by the desire to store video. Thus, the slow increase in the storage capacity of navigation systems can perhaps be best explained by the need to store only the navigation database and compressed audio files (MP3/WMA), where 20GB is usually more than sufficient, says Semicast.

With legislation in most regions of the world banning the viewing of video in the front seats, it is questionable, therefore, if mainstream navigation systems will need to substantially increase storage capacity above current levels, even in the long term. At present, even the highest capacity aftermarket navigation system offers storage of 40GB, representing only double the capacity of the original systems introduced seven years ago, according to the firm.

"With the storage capacity of automotive entertainment systems set to increase only gradually, it is judged most likely that these systems will fall into the territory of flash memory storage, causing shipments of HDDs in cars to stall," said Colin Barnden, Semicast principal analyst.

While the existing cost per gigabyte of flash memory prevents its use for mass storage in mainstream automotive entertainment systems, continued rapid price erosion from chip suppliers such as SanDisk, coupled with only slowly increasing storage requirements, are steadily bringing the crossover point into view. Thus, as the cost per gigabyte of flash memory drops, so in the long term suppliers of automotive entertainment systems will almost certainly begin to design-out HDD in favor of a high-density flash memory solution. Flash memory offers vital automotive benefits over HDD, such as no moving parts, less susceptibility to vibration and shock, improved mean time between failure and operation over a wider temperature range, says Semicast.

Accordingly, Semicast believes HDD may prove to be only an interim solution in automotive entertainment, with its long-term use possibly limited only to high capacity systems such as some aftermarket navigation systems and high-end rear seat entertainment systems that compress and store movies or record TV. This scenario would mirror that seen already in consumer portable media players, where lower capacity products intended primarily for storing audio already use flash memory (typically up to 32GB), while video-based products such as the iPod classic and Archos 705 provide storage up to 160GB using HDD.

SAN JOSE – Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments grew more than 6% sequentially during the second quarter to 2.3 billion sq. inches, according to SEMI.

Compared to the second quarter of 2007, total area shipments increased nearly 5%.

"Following the slightly weaker first quarter and macro-economic concerns, silicon shipments grew more than 6% in Q2, which is in line with normal seasonality for the quarter, particularly with the start of a new fiscal year for most Japanese companies,” said Kazuyo Heinink, SEMI spokesperson. “This growth was mainly attributed to 300 mm.”

BANNOCKBURN, IL – The EC Regulatory Committee on Ecodesign and Energy Labeling has agreed to a draft concerning the standby and off modes of energy-using household and office products.

This proposal will be sent to the European Council and European Parliament for review. It should be adopted by the Commission and published by the EU at the beginning of 2009, barring any objections.

The first phase will come into effect in 2010.

The proposal is already coming under fire from electronics engineers. As one critic noted to a well-known industry email list, “The EU commission groups seem to be very inept when defining scopes and no two policy making groups seem to learn from the other's mistakes,” adding that the proposal’s scope is “extremely vague and confusing … the [EU] drops in words like household and office equipment into the scope, possibly with the intention of making it clearer but in reality just making it more obscure.”

A pdf of the proposal can be viewed at

mtprog.com/ReferenceLibrary/Draft%20EuP%20standby%20post%20vote.

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