Finance

Engineers need to stop whining about the low status of their profession and get out there and project a positive image to encourage more people to the profession, according to Lord Sainsbury, Minister for Science and Innovation. “I’m usually asked what is the Government going to do [about the image of engineering]. I ask, what are you as engineers going ...

Venture capital funding dropped in Europe last year, with most investment through management buy-outs or buy-ins, claims a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers. “Most concerning, there is less money – only nine per cent of institutional investments – going to venture capital [VC] funds,” Keith Arundale, European venture capital leader for technology at PricewaterhouseCoopers, told Electronics Weekly. New funds raised in 2003 ...

Troubled wafer-maker IQE is seeing volumes rise as it switches opto-wafer production from telecoms to consumer markets. “In the last two years we have seen the market change quite distinctly from telecoms in the US to consumer in the Far East,” said marketing head Chris Meadows. “We are certainly not out of the woods yet, but we are much more ...

Cypress Semiconductor is to spend $100m acquiring Belgium firm FillFactory to expand its market share in components for mobile phones and cameras. FillFactory has pixel CMOS image sensor technology and has existing customers including Kodak. The Belgium firm had sales of $6m and pre-tax profit of £1.3m in the quarter to the end of March this year. “The market for ...

Freescale has announced the terms of its spin-off – an initial public offering (IPO) that could be worth $2.5bn. The Motorola SPS-launch company said it plans to offer 121 million class A common stock shares, priced between $17.50 and $19.50. Underwriters will also have the option to purchase an additional 18.2 million shares to meet demand, according to a filing ...

In the end, it all comes down to money. In this case, however, it’s all about someone else’s money. Wally Rhines, chairman and CEO of Mentor Graphics, got it right when he said the real issue for the US electronics market is its continuing ability to attract capital. Success isn’t only about innovation, although that certainly helps. It’s also about ...

Good news for those still plagued with memories of the worst semiconductor industry downturn in 2001: A dream scenario is coming with forecasts of hot growth, followed by orderly cooling, and then an almost soft landing, market researcher iSuppli said. While the semiconductor industry has hit the sweet spot in 2004 with supply and demand forces aligning to generate strong ...

The Youth, Electronics, Design, Applications (YEDA) award has merged with the Young Engineers of Britain award to create one larger single event aimed at people under 19 years-old. The Young Engineers competition, which is intended to stimulate interest in engineering among young people, will culminate in the Annual Celebration of Engineering to be held in July this year. The total ...

DAB chip firm Radioscape is to set up a new office in Hong Kong to serve the Chinese region. William Lam has been made head of Asia Pacific operations for the firm and, based in Singapore, he will be responsible for setting up the Hong Kong office. Radioscape said that many of its DAB module and OEM receiver manufacturers are ...

Frontier Silicon has revealed a low power system-on-chip for new Korean mobile TV services. Frontier is presenting its product development plans at the International Forum on Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting being held today (June 15) and tomorrow in Seoul, South Korea. The firm said this would include the introduction of terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting (T-DMB) systems – based on the Chorus ...