Finance

Programmable logic company Xilinx is launching a corporate venture fund to the tune of $100m. The Ecosystem Venture Fund is designed to strategically fund companies that build products and technologies that create an ecosystem in support of Xilinx’s own products. The fund will especially focus on DSP embedded and high-speed connectivity technologies, according to Hans Schwartz, senior director of business ...

US electronics and computer factories boosted their output 1.1 per cent in November from October, and 18.3 per cent from last October, according to the US Federal Reserve Board. The monthly gain was double the 0.5 per cent recorded in each of the previous two months but short of the 1.4 per cent average monthly gain over the past year. The ...

Turnover in semiconductor CEOs accelerated this year with 52 chief executives or equivalents resigned, retired or fired, compared with 42 semiconductor departures in 2003. this is according to a survey by Who’s Who in Semiconductors. “If Ulrich Schumacher’s resignation from Infineon Technologies was the biggest surprise in the first half of 2004, Scott McGregor’s departure from Philips Semiconductors was the ...

There is growing industry optimism of a positive fourth quarter after a year in which expectations have soared, slumped, and are now rising again. Intel, the first company to warn of mid-year inventory problems, has now said Q4 will be very much better than expected. “We’re going to hear more announcements like that. What Intel is saying is that it’s ...

In the firm’s first reported results since floating this summer, e2v Technologies increased sales 11 per cent to £47.2m and had a pre-tax loss of £2.6m. The firm’s chief executive Keith Attwood said the results had been encouraging overall in the face of difficult dollar exchange rates. “On a like for like basis turnover was actually up 17 per cent,” ...

Scottish firm The Crystal Consortium has been awarded £20,000 by the Scottish Executive to develop array elements based on piezoelectric single crystal. The elements are designed to be used in mid-frequency sonar for underwater obstacle detection. The firm said they will prove the benefits of single crystal arrays overtraditional PZT ceramic arrays. Stephen-Mark Williams, sales and marketing director of the ...

Looking to reduce excess chip inventories, semiconductor suppliers are cutting wafer starts and reassessing capital spending plans, according to a new report from iSuppli. The value of excess chip inventories in the supply chain “skyrocketed” in Q3 to $1.6bn, up 103 per cent from $800m in Q2, the market research analyst firm said. The numbers include inventories held by semiconductor ...

The electronics industry lives or dies by its innovation and technology. The business climate has been difficult in recent years, with some industry specialists even asking themselves if UK electronics has a future. I believe that the answer is yes. But success is not guaranteed – it has to be worked for. The Government’s Electronics Innovation and Growth Team (EIGT) ...

Electronics in the UK is an “invisible, fragmented” industry that lacks coherent representation and is failing to take advantage of “almost endless opportunities”, despite great confidence in its technical capability. That is the view of the DTI’s Electronics Innovation and Growth Team (EIGT), which on Monday published a report into UK electronics. Electronics 2015 – Making a Visible Difference makes ...

UK and European start-up firms are suffering from a lack of investment when compared to their US counterparts. Moreover, start-ups in Europe are limited by a lack of management expertise, claim investment firms. “US start-ups are typically ten times higher funded than in the UK,” said Adrian Buckley, sales manager for Mentor Graphics in Western Europe. “They [US firms] are ...