Lots of interesting news to report, gleaned from last week's earnings calls:

Companies and Products

Analog Devices' RF design tools now support the former Hittite Microwave products. Hittite was acquired by ADI about a year ago.

Some 10 years after entering the cable set-top box market with the acquisition of Scientific Atlanta, Cisco is exiting, selling the business to Technicolor for $600 million.

Freescale's RF revenue was down 4 percent in Q2, due to a pause in BTS CapEx spending. Gregg Lowe, Freescale's CEO, discussed the downturn in RF revenue during their earnings call.

Lowe also commented on the threat from the Chinese company that is buying NXP's RF business.

GigOptix reported their first profitable quarter, with Q2 revenue of $9.8 million, up 8.6 percent sequentially and 22 percent over last year's quarter.

Infineon has shipped over 10 million chip sets for auto radar, estimating their 77 GHz market share was nearly 50 percent in 2014.

Keysight announced a new 5G reference solution that develops channel models to 44 GHz (90 GHz option), with as many as 8 MIMO channels.

MACOM reported record revenue of $130.7 million for their fiscal Q3, which was up 4.6 percent sequentially and 16 percent above last year's quarter. Non-GAAP gross margin was 54.0 percent, with operating income of 24.7 percent.

During the earnings call, MACOM's CEO John Croteau was asked about the status of bringing GaN on Si to market.

The European Commission approved Nokia's acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent.

During their earnings call, NXP reported a sequential decline in RF power in Q2, although revenue was above last year's quarter. However their Q3 forecast is for RF power revenue to be down 40 percent! Specific revenue numbers were not disclosed. Rick Clemmer, NXP CEO, was asked how Freescale's RF business will fare at NXP.

Pasternack has expanded their portfolio of millimeter wave waveguide products with five continuously variable attenuators covering 33 to 110 GHz.

Qorvo reported fiscal Q1 revenue of $673 million, up 6 percent quarterly and 23 percent above last year's quarter. The Mobile segment carried the company, as wireless infrastructure softness hurt the Infrastructure and Defense segment, which was down 13 percent sequentially.

Markets and Technology

Internet penetration in China reached 48.8 percent at the end of June, reflecting 668 million users. 594 million accessed the Internet via mobile, according to data from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).

Africa is developing into a very active testbed for providing Internet access to regions without much infrastructure — attracting Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and IBM.

Although we read a lot of hype about the IoT, here are two examples that are deployed, using GPS data to guide expensive operations.

Roger Martin, the most published author in the Harvard Business Review offers cogent thoughts on strategy:

• planning is not strategy,
• non-choices are not strategic, and
• analysis prevents innovation

Have a good week.