Pat Hindle, MWJ Editor

RSS

As we approach IMS 2009 MTT-S June 7-12, most of our entries will be related to the conference and exhibition in Boston (our home town). Microwave Journal's May issue is dedicated to show coverage and has various exclusive articles including the cover story that takes a look at the past conferences in Boston as told by the past chairs and a preview of the upcoming show. We have a dedicated web site that is live now, the Online Show Daily , that covers the show news, new products, articles from the May issue, messages from the chairs, videos, photos, special...

We have covered the potential benefits of the stimulus funding to the wireless industry and now ABI has released a report covering this subject. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, also known simply as the Stimulus Bill) will provide funding for a massive $6.8 billion worth of wireless communications upgrades and new deployments over 2009-2010. The Act offers a significant one-off opportunity for wireless equipment vendors. In healthcare, the scope for adding wireless to the technology mix encompasses Wi-Fi-enabled mobile devices and sensors, communications systems linking health networks, telepresence, wireless LAN equipment, and Wi-Fi-enabled video surveillance systems. In education,...

The ZigBee® Alliance announced it is proposing use of the ZigBee Smart Energy public application profile to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as a basis for an IEC standard. ZigBee Smart Energy is the only standardized home area network solution in the market today meeting the tough requirements of leading utilities worldwide according to the alliance. The deployment of an estimated 30 million ZigBee equipped smart meters is underway in North America. Working with the IEC on an even broader global standardization will benefit the energy sector and public by placing more emphasis on energy management and smart grid development....

The latest Strategy Analytics report says that TriQuint and Win Semiconductors continue to control the market, increasing their collective share of the GaAs (gallium arsenide) foundry market from 67% in 2007 to 77% in 2008. TriQuint held onto the top spot in 2008, benefiting from commercial opportunities as well as engagements in the US defense and aerospace industries. Win Semiconductors is by far the largest pure-play GaAs foundry, pushing TriQuint hard for the number one spot in 2008, with only one percentage point separating the two companies in overall market share. "Strategy Analytics estimates that the total market for GaAs...

Despite the weakened state of the world economy RFID markets are not contracting, according to the latest data from ABI Research. At worst they are growing at a slower rate. Positive signs are beginning to appear and forecasts suggest that even with the ailing automotive vertical included, the RFID market should see 11% growth between 2009 and 2010. Remove the deeply depressed automotive immobilizer numbers which are directly tied to vehicle production, and the growth rate jumps to almost 16%. "Transponders, readers, software, and services are all showing healthy growth,"says practice director Michael Liard. "he most robust applications include contactless...

You might have noticed that we have added some cool new tools to the blog. In the right column, we now have a link at the top to get all of our entries as audio files. You can listen to them as you do something else or download them to your mp3 player. There is also a feed on the page to subscribe to for updates. Also in the right column is a Twitter Search feed. You can enter any term and it will provide real time updates for that keyword. Enter IMS2009 to follow everyone for Tweats about the...

Over the past year, one of the RF and microwave industry icons has been diced into 5 pieces and sold to various companies. If we go back a few years, M/A-COM was purchased by the connector giant AMP back in 1995 as they wanted expand into the growing wireless markets. AMP was then acquired by the even larger Tyco International in 1999 as they were buying companies in many industries. In 2007, Tyco International split up into 3 companies (after the Dennis Koslowski years), one of which was Tyco Electronics (the medical companies formed a new company called Covidien and...

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) has announced they're expanding their solar interest far beyond California and into outer space. The San Francisco based utility plans on purchasing 200 MW of electricity from Solaren Corp., a start-up that is trying to produce solar power in space. Solaren plans to deploy solar panels in space that would collect the sun's energy and transfer it via microwaves back to a collecting station on Earth. Then the energy would be converted to electricity and feed into the grid. The microwave frequency would be one that is least absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere. People...

According to ABI Research, consumers did not cut back too much in purchasing handsets during the first quarter of 2009 which is good news. Handset vendors shipped 258 million handsets by the end of the quarter which represents an 11% year-over-year decline. This significantly exceeded the previous forecast of 253.5 million. ABI has introduced a note of mild optimism in its handset forecasts for YE-2009, revising them from -8.4% to -8%. Samsung and LG demonstrated healthy gains to take their market shares to 17.8% and 8.8%, respectively. Another star performer was RIM which raised its share to 3.0% due largely...

Our April issue themed "Amplifiers and Oscillators" just came out with the lead story about the advantages and disadvantages of Si versus GaAs based semiconductor technologies for power amplifier applications (the discussion is contained to lower power levels, There is no doubt that GaAs is usually better suited for higher power applications but in the high power realm, LDMOS (at lower frequencies) and GaN have made significant inroads into the market. So it seems GaAs is always getting squeezed in the market with competition on both ends. We will address this high power market in our June issue lead story...