- 3 March 2006 -

News Update - Overview of recent market and business week-ending March 3

OPTO COMPANY EXPANDS: Alloptic, Inc., the designer and developer of Gigabit Ethernet Passive Optical Networks (GEPONs), the most widely deployed next generation access network solution, announced that they have expanded operations with the opening of an office in Atlanta, Georgia. Alloptic's expansion is the direct result of strong demand for its products and services in the Eastern United States.

NOKIA - BIG CHANGES AHEAD: Nokia's current Head of Design, Frank Nuovo, has decided to 'pursue his own design interests' after more than 16 years with the company and over a decade as its design head. From April 1st the new Nokia Head of Design will be Alastair Curtis who is presently responsible for design at Nokia's Mobile Phones business group. Overall, Nokia is strengthening its multidisciplinary design unit by forming a single company-wide design organization. The new global team will be responsible for the entire design process, from strategy and conceptualization to product development, for Nokia's complete portfolio of devices.

4G SUCCESS: In Japan DoCoMo has achieved 2.5 Gbit/s packet transmission in the downlink while moving at 20 km/h, in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture. DoCoMo said it achieved a maximum 1Gbps speed in a similar field experiment on May 9, 2005. By increasing the number of MIMO transmission antennas from four to six and by using 64-QAM, data volume per transmission was increased from 4 bits to 6 bits. In this way, a maximum speed of 2.5Gbps was achieved; faster than the International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R)'s proposed standard.

DISK DRIVE MARKETS: It seems more people are becoming aware of the need to back-up their data. According to IDC's Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker, the global external disk storage systems factory revenues grew $708 m in the fourth quarter of 2005, posting 17.9% growth from a year ago to $4.7 bn. Over that quarter, the total disk storage systems market grew to $6.8 bn up 13.1% from the prior year's fourth quarter. This means that the total disk storage systems capacity shipped reached 653 petabytes, growing 54.6%. For the full year, EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 20.7% revenue share, followed by HP and IBM with 18.3% and 13.6% revenue share, respectively.

CELLPHONE HAZARD: In a new study to be featured in the March issue of IEEE Spectrum, Carnegie Mellon University researchers at the Dept. of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP) report that cellphones and other portable electronic devices can still pose a hazard to normal operation of critical electronics on aircraft. They found that on average one to four cell phone calls are made from commercial flights in NE USA. Some calls are still being made during critical flight stages such as climb-out, or on final approach which could cause accidents, they said.

ACQUISITIONS: Varian, Inc. announced that it has taken a significant step toward expanding its information rich detection (IRD) portfolio by acquiring Fourier Transform mass spectrometry (FTMS) technology through its acquisition of Southern California-based IonSpec Corporation.

NEW R&D PROGRAM: Advance Nanotech Inc., partnered with Alps Electric Company Ltd, Dow Corning Corp., University of Cambridge researchers based at the Center for Advanced Photonics and Electronics (CAPE) at the University of Cambridge. The project, called RANTED, will explore a new class of materials with novel dielectric properties in the microwave range, suitable for applications in mobile phones and other wireless systems.