Chips – Semiconductor

SAN DIEGO-CDMA proprietor Qualcomm Inc. said it expects to meet the high end of its third-quarter estimates both in earnings per share and phone chip shipments. The company had anticipated pro forma EPS of between 21 cents and 23 cents, …

OXFORD, United Kingdom—While the cost of integrating a camera into a cell phone is only US$10, silicon chip developer STMicroelectronics has complained that European terminal makers are resisting the move to multimedia messaging service (MMS). The company, which recently acquired …

SAN DIEGO—Qualcomm Inc. said its second-quarter profits stood at $43.9 million, or 5 cents a share, amounting to a 60-percent drop. A year earlier, the company reported net income of $109.7 million, or 15 cents a share. The company attributed …

SEOUL, Korea—Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. reported $7.6 billion in total sales for the first quarter and $1.46 billion in profits, which marked a record 764-percent increase from the fourth quarter. Samsung reported $948.4 million in profits for first-quarter 2001. The …

SAN BRUNO, Calif.—Broadband wireless company IPWireless Inc. announced it will partner with Flextronics Semiconductor to develop and manufacture the IPWireless System on a Chip (SoC). “The SoC design will open the door for mobile hardware manufacturers to integrate our technology …

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.—Sprint PCS signed an agreement with SportsLine.com Inc. to offer its Wireless Web subscribers up-to-the-minutes sports news and information. “Sprint is clearly providing the type of valuable information our customers want,” said Chip Novick, Sprint’s vice president of …

OXFORD, United Kingdom—With Bluetooth chipset manufacturers forecasting shipments of more than 90 million devices this year, the technology looks, eventually, like it is coming of age. The announcement last week by Apple to support the short-range wireless technology brings fresh …

LONDON—Although global computer chip sales are down sharply form a year ago, year-on-year comparisons are improving, according to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics, commenting on numbers recently released by the European Semiconductor Industry Association (ESIA) and the European Electronic component Manufacturers’ …

OXFORD, United Kingdom—Mobile phones should be equipped with satellite tracking and theft alarms, according to the U.K.-based Design Council. The organization claimed that if cell-phone manufacturers adopt these two examples, the number of thefts of mobile devices would decline rapidly. …

BEIJING—China Unicom’s CDMA network registered 448,000 subscribers at the end of February. Only a paltry 9,000 users signed up in February. The vast majority of CDMA users were transferred from an existing network that Unicom took over from Great Wall …

HAMAMATSU CITY, Shizuoka—Yamaha Corp. announced it will provide a 16-note polyphonic cellular ring tone download service to German carrier E-Plus Mobilfunk GmbH & Co. KG—coinciding with E-Plus’s launch of i-mode wireless Internet service in Germany. The service, Yamaha Super-Ringtone!, will …

AUSTIN, Texas, United States—Motorola said it sold its GSM/General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) handset chip technology to Benq of Taiwan, one of Asia’s leading original design manufacturers of mobile phones. “The scalable, highly integrated i.250 platform combines an advanced chipset …

TOKYO—Motorola Inc. said it plans to shut its chip plants in Texas and Japan, involving 4,000 layoffs. This will be part of the 9,400 workers the company plans to cut as it pursues profitability. The company also plans to move …

WASHINGTON-A Bush administration report due out shortly could hurt Nextel Communications Inc.’s campaign to win government approval of a controversial spectrum realignment plan designed to resolve commercial wireless interference to public safety and business radio systems, a proposal major U.S. …

SAN DIEGO-Qualcomm Inc. announced it will launch gpsOne-enabled handsets and their associated position location service plans from KDDI Corp. in Japan this month. Qualcomm’s gpsOne technology is integrated on its MSM3300 chip, which is included in the handset. The chip …

SAN DIEGO—Qualcomm Inc. announced it will launch gpsOne-enabled handsets and their associated position location service plans from KDDI Corp. in Japan this month. Qualcomm’s gpsOne technology is integrated on its MSM3300 chip, which is included in the handset. The chip …

TOKYO—Toshiba Corp. announced it is selling its Virginia-based chip manufacturing plant to Micron Technology, thus exiting the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip manufacturing business. Toshiba expects the sale of Dominion Semiconductor to be completed by the end of January.

BURNABY, British Columbia—PMC-Sierra has released its PM2360-KIT Gandalf reference design kit, a reference platform for third-generation wireless base station designs. PMC-Sierra said the new design kit allows developers to design efficient and low-cost digital multi-carrier base station designs. It integrates …

KISTA, Sweden—Spirea AB unveiled its BlueTrac RF transceiver chip and BlueAmp power amplifier designed to extend the range of Bluetooth radios. The company said the BlueTrac chip does not require any external passive components, allowing it to run with a …

BEIJING—Philips Semiconductor and China’s Huawei Technologies have agreed to jointly develop application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for 3G products. Philips Semiconductor will mainly provide technical support and manufacturing services. The company will provide Huawei with 0.18 micron ASICs. Both companies …

While 802.11b, otherwise known as Wi-Fi, has made huge inroads as the wireless local area network technology of choice, many companies providing equipment and support for the technology acknowledge higher-speed alternatives will eventually displace Wi-Fi as the WLAN standard. Those …

SAN JOSE, Calif.-Hitachi Semiconductor Inc. said it has unveiled a new Flash memory product, called Mobile Media Chips, which saves space and enhances storage for multimedia functions in handheld PCs, personal digital assistants, mobile phones and pagers. “The benefits make …

CHICAGO—Motorola Inc. said it has created a new subsidiary called Thoughtbeam Inc. to commercialize its chip technology, which combines low-cost silicon with speed-of-light. The company’s corporate vice president Padmasree Warrior will head the subsidiary as general manager.

HELSINKI, Finland-Scandinavia has long been the most fertile and concentrated spawning ground for technology innovation in Europe. The torchbearers for this culture have been led by global names such as Nokia, Ericsson, Benefon and Europolitan. In 1985, Nokia’s main claim …

BEIJING-The U.S. subsidiary of China’s largest electric meter producer, the Holley Group based in the eastern province of Zhejiang, has acquired the design operations for CDMA mobile phones from Philips Semiconductors, a division of Holland’s Philips Electronics. Holley Communications USA …