<

publicité

br> French based Altis Semiconductor, a joint-venture between IBM and Infineon, will have to find new customers to survive. Both IBM and Infineon want to exit from their common fab by 2009. Wolfgang Ziebart, Infineon CEO, August Franze, IBM Microelectronics vice-president, and Françoise Gri, IBM France CEO, met with the French representatives in Corbeil-Esssonnes in the beginning of June, to explain that they didn’t want to pass new orders after 2009. The best solution for Altis would be to become a pure foundry, but it means to invest in more advanced processes. At present, Altis is engaged in a restructuring plan concerning the layoff of 424 employees out of 1946 total workforce.

Crocus Technology, a French start-up focusing on Magnetic Random Access Memories (MRAM), announces the closing of its Series A round of funding totalling $17 million. The round's participants include San Francisco-based Sofinnova Ventures (lead investor), Paris-based firms Ventech, CDC Entreprises Innovation, AGF Private Equity and Sofinnova Partners, and NanoDimension. Crocus wants to become the world leader in the MRAM market.

Crocus was first incorporated in France in 2004 with an initial grant from CEA and CNRS, France's leading research organizations. Crocus is headquartered in Grenoble (France) with operations in the Paris area and in Silicon Valley (California). The MRAM technology that is the foundation on which Crocus is built was developed in the Grenoble-based SPINTEC research center. The related patents and know-how are being transferred to Crocus and will be continuously improved through formal joint development programs between the company, Spintec and other European laboratories.

MRAM memories uniquely combine several key features of other existing memory technologies. They are non-volatile, have a fast read and write speed, an SRAM like interface, an extended lifetime, and a low manufacturing cost.
The proceeds from this fund raising will allow Crocus to hire engineers and scientists in process engineering, test and design from all over Europe and the US. Crocus is also acquiring specialized equipment, which will enable the company to complete a first memory test vehicle in the next 12 months and its first commercial product shortly thereafter.

"This first round, quite unique in this technology area, is a defining moment for Crocus," commented Jean-Pierre Braun, CEO of Crocus. "We now have everything we need to be the first to bring to the marketplace a competitive MRAM memory that will fulfill the customers' expectations, in particular with regards to reliability, speed and capacity," Braun added.

There are many important applications for MRAM memory. They are an ideal fit for mobile phones, PDA's, smart cards, notebook computers, RFID tags, as well as automotive and military applications.

SCM Microsystems has completed the sale of its Digital TV solutions business to Kudelski for total consideration of $11 million. Under the terms of the transaction, SCM has sold to Kudelski substantially all of the assets that relate to its Digital TV solutions business, including its office building in France, certain inventory, contracts, trademarks and intellectual property. In addition, approximately 40 employees in Europe and Asia have joined Kudelski. The Kudelski Group (www.nagra.com) is a world leader in digital security. The Group is headquartered in Cheseaux-sur- Lausanne, Switzerland.

According to Global Sources, China and Taiwan are expected to export over 54 million broadband communication products in 2006 worth over US$2 billion -- up 55 percent year- on-year. Mainland China is expected to ship 22.3 million units in 2006, while Taiwan is projected to export 31.8 million units. In 2006, sales of broadband products are expected to reach about US$2.4 billion, with exports accounting for at least 85 percent, or more than US$2 billion.Despite growing demand, manufacturers say export prices will fall in 2006. Makers serve brands and customers worldwide including Dell, Fujitsu, Italy Telecom, LG, Linksys, Lucent, Siemens and Thomson.

According to IDC, factory revenue in the worldwide server market declined 1.9% year over year to $11.9 billion in the first quarter of 2006. Following ten successive quarters of year-over-year revenue growth, this was the second consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue decline as quarterly compares become more difficult. Worldwide server unit shipments growth slowed modestly to 9.5% in 1Q06 when compared with 1Q05.

Microsoft Windows servers continued to show strong growth as revenues grew 5.9% and unit shipments grew 12.9% year over year. Significantly, quarterly factory revenue of $4.4 billion for Windows servers represented the largest single segment of the server market, comprising 37.1% of all server revenue in 1Q06.
Unix servers experienced a 7.1% decline in factory revenue year over year, while unit shipments declined 8.7% when compared with 1Q05. Worldwide Unix revenues of more than $3.9 billion for the quarter and represented 33.2% of overall quarterly factory revenue.

Linux servers posted their fifteenth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, with year-over-year revenue growth of 17.0% and unit shipments up 14.4%. Linux servers now represent 12.2% of all server revenue.

Although the x86 server market continued to grow in 1Q06 with revenue of $6.1 billion worldwide, year-over-ear growth slowed to 6.3% in 1Q06 from 12.7% in 1Q05. Unit shipment growth also continued with a moderate gain of 12.1% to 1.7 million servers.

LCD TV shipments jumped 135% year-over-year (Y/Y) while falling 14% quarter-over-quarter (Q/Q) to 7.4M units. Due to gains by larger sizes, LCD TV revenues grew nearly as fast as LCD TV unit shipments, rising 114% Y/Y while falling 12% Q/Q to $8.8B. ASPs increased 2% Q/Q while falling just 9% Y/Y to $1195. Relative to other technologies, LCD TVs overtook CRT TVs at 30"-34" for the first time on a unit basis in Q1'06 and rose from 17% to 23% of the 40"-44" market with PDPs and MD RPTVs losing share. Europe's share rising from 44% to 46% on pre-World Cup demand.
Four brands dominate the LCD TV market accounting for a 50% share of units and a 54% share of revenues. As indicated in Tables 1 and 2, Philips was n°1 in units but n°4 in revenues while Sony was n°4 in units and n°1 in revenues.