Finance

Microtune and Broadcom have taken off their gloves, and announced agreements to settle all outstanding patent and antitrust litigation between the two companies. Under the terms of the settlement, all outstanding claims in pending litigation will be dismissed with prejudice, Microtune said. The settlement agreement also provides for reciprocal releases covering all asserted and unasserted claims between the parties. Additionally, Broadcom ...

Japan’s two powerhouse industries, automobiles and electronics, are rapidly fusing into a single strength as electronics dominates the automotive industry. Hitachi will merge TOKICO and Hitachi Unisia Automotive – its two automotive components manufacturers in the Hitachi Group – with the parent company on October 1. Hitachi’s goal is nothing short of becoming a bigger player in the booming automotive ...

National Semiconductor’s financial fourth quarter revenues climbed 34 per cent from Q4 2003, as the company reported $571.2m in sales. The quarter ended May 30 also represented an 11 per cent increase from the company’s Q3. National, which set out to focus on higher-margin analogue in its 2004 financial year, reported a profit of $126.4m. Gross margin rose to an ...

Former blockbuster year 2000 is about to be outdone by 2004, as the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) now expects record semiconductor sales this year, boosted by higher than expected growth of 28.6 per cent. The news came from the industry group’s mid-year forecast, which called for sales of $214bn to surpass the $204bn recorded in 2000. A further compound annual ...

Looking down from his 34th floor offices onto Emperor Akihito’s Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Satoru Ito, president of the world’s third largest semiconductor company, is planning how best to benefit from a favourable conjunction of circumstances. Renesas Technology, formed last year by merging the semiconductor businesses of Mitsubishi and Hitachi, retains many of the benefits of its parental connections while ...

Business confidence in the UK electronics industry is beginning to look healthy and widespread again after three years of a market downturn which has shut companies, taken thousands of manufacturing jobs and deeply scarred most of the survivors. An Electronics Weekly survey of senior executives and managers in 36 companies during May clearly showed that the vast majority were experiencing ...

Intelek has seen its full year results hit by the dollar exchange rate to the tune of £600,000. The satellite components firm said £6m of sales in the year to the end of March 2004 were in US$. Intelek would have seen headline earnings up 39 per cent if exchange rates had stayed the same as last year, said the ...

Engineering and manufacturing companies have seen strengthening business prospects in the second quarter of the year. A survey by the manufacturer’s organisation, the EEF found engineering output and orders growing in the second quarter at their fastest pace since the end of 1996, largely driven by increasing exports. Also for the first time in six years companies planned to increase ...

Seagate jobs in Northern Ireland are safe, said the firm, as it announced nearly 3,000 redundancies in plans to save $150m a year. The hard drive maker said the cuts represent around seven per cent of its global workforce, and include voluntary redundancy. “Reductions in force are occurring in various geographies on a targeted basis within Seagate’s various functional departments ...

Radstone Technology has moved into a new headquarters building on the Tove Valley Business Park in Towcester. The supplier of high-end embedded computer boards for defence and aerospace applications will concentrate its UK-based manufacturing and R&D activities in the £10.5m building, which occupies a six acre site in Northamptonshire. “Our success has made it possible for us to make this substantial ...