Strong May 1st Labor Day demand in China enables March’s large-sized panel shipments to surge by 5.6 percent

TAIWAN: Coupled with TV brand vendors’ preparation for ordering 2012’s new models, top 4 panel makers’ LCD TV shipments in Mar-12 jumped as inventory stocking started to surge in preparation for May 1st Labor Day. Among which CMI enjoys the most powerful shipment growth momentum.

According to WitsView, the panel research division of TrendForce, large-sized panel shipments in Mar-12 amounted to 61.58 million units with an increasing MoM of 5.6 percent.

LCD TV panel shipments in Mar-12 possessed the strongest momentum, reaching 16.59 million units with MoM growth of 18 percent, while monitor panel shipments amounted to 16.30 million units, a rising MoM of 6.2 percent. Shipments of regular notebook above 12.1” came to 16.84 million units with a MoM increase of 1 percent.

As for tablet PC shipments, as LGD and Sharp’s panel supply remained insufficient to meet the demand for The New iPad that has already been launched, coupled with controlled iPad2 2 inventory and plunging demand for panel, leading the overall tablet PC shipments in Mar-12 to fall by 11.9 percent MoM with a total of 6.11 million units. Netbook shipments amounted to 2.74 million units and stayed flat compared to the previous month.

In terms of individual panel makers’ performance, CMI’s TV panel shipments in Mar-12 outperformed its peers with a surging MoM of 35 percent due to two factors: 1) its significant effort in establishing partnership with China brand vendors, 2) strong demand for 39” and 50” new-sized panels, resulting in tight capacity in G6 and G7.5. AUO, Samsung, and LGD also enjoyed the increasing MoM of 16 percent in TV panel shipments.

Jeffy Chen, TrendForce research manager, indicated that overall panel shipments in Mar-12 jumped MoM due to inventory preparation for May 1st Labor Day and downstream IT vendors’ pulling orders. Notwithstanding notebook, monitor, TV downstream vendors’ downward procurement momentum, LGD and Sharp’s increasing panel production of The New iPad since 2Q12 is expected to lead April’s overall tablet PC and large-sized panel shipments to grow over 40 percent and 2~3 percent MoM, respectively.Source: WitsView, Taiwan.

Aspera powers big data ecosystems with high-speed transfer platform

2012 NAB Show, LAS VEGAS, USA: Aspera Inc., creators of next-generation software technologies that move the world’s data at maximum speed, announced that its patented fasp transport technology will be demonstrated as part of numerous partner solutions at NAB 2012.

Aspera enables a growing ecosystem of partners in the areas of cloud computing, network-attached storage and digital media production and delivery, where leading technology suppliers bring high-performance transport capabilities to their products, systems and services by building upon the Aspera platform.

A pioneer in the enablement of high-speed data-intensive workflows throughout the enterprise, Aspera has now unlocked the cloud for big data with its industry-leading high-speed transport solutions. Amazon Web Services and Aspera offer combined solutions for high-performance storage, processing and distribution in the cloud, allowing media companies large and small to take full advantage of integrated media workflows at scale on AWS. Microsoft has teamed up with Aspera to integrate Aspera high-speed transfer with Windows Azure Media Services.

Video encoding pioneers, Sorenson Media and Zencoder provide cloud-based services that rely on Aspera for big-data movement to and from remote infrastructures in order to offer massively scalable video encoding to their customers. And, online file sharing leader YouSendIt is taking advantage of the Aspera transport platform to deliver enhanced file transfer speeds for large files.

From automatic file forwarding after upload to full-blown business process orchestration, Aspera software is designed to handle the high-performance transfer of digital assets in even the most complex end-to-end workflows. The Aspera Orchestrator enables the integration and automation of Aspera file transfer tasks with third-party applications, systems and services with a growing library of plug-ins for third-party software and systems from: Microsoft, Symantec, McAfee, Harmonic, DigitalRapids, FFmpeg, Telestream, BigBand, SorensonMedia, ThoughtEquity, Xytech, PilatMedia, YouTube, SeaChange, Interra Systems, Mediainfo, PGP, Google and more.

Best-of-breed workflow solutions from Accenture, CEITON Technologies, Grass Valley, IBM, Harmonic, and ScheduALL provide full compatibility with Aspera for high-speed file transfer.

“By enabling the high-speed movement of file-based content over wide area networks, Aspera software has become a core technology component that digital media companies rely on every day for their most demanding workflows,” said Bhavik Vyas, director of technology partnerships and cloud services at Aspera. “We’re very happy to see broad and growing adoption of our transport by partner vendors who offer new solutions and services that help move big-data industries forward.”

The combination of Aspera software and high-performance, network-attached storage ensures the fastest possible end-to-end transfer from source to destination. Not only does Aspera technology deliver full network bandwidth utilization for maximum transfer speed, its built-in adaptive rate control ensures optimal storage throughput performance.

Aspera server software ships on EMC Isilon scale-out storage, providing a cluster-aware version of Aspera high-speed file transfer technology for high-performance content ingest and delivery over the wide area. The combination of Hitachi Data Systems storage and Aspera high-speed data transfer powers complex broadcast workflow infrastructures in support of video capture, production, management, archive and transmission workflows. Aspera software is also compatible and has been performance tested with top storage platforms from Harmonic, HP, NetApp and SolidAccess.

AEGIS MOS streamlines NPI process and documentation for Badger Technologies

HORSHAM, USA: Badger Technologies has incorporated the Aegis’ MOS Manufacturing Operations Software into their Farmington, NY factory. The Aegis MOS is helping Badger to better fulfill their customer’s needs by streamlining their NPI documentation and machine programming processes, and allowing improved, online access to the documentation.

Badger’s NPI process involves using customer supplied data to create programs for their SMT and AOI equipment, and generate process documentation for their operators. Aegis MOS’s facilities are automating the documentation activity, eliminating the need for manual data entry and bringing several benefits to Badger’s manufacturing.

The process for loading, validating and releasing documents for production had multiple manual data entry points. This was time-consuming and prone to human error, and has been eliminated. By contrast, Aegis generates documentation automatically and directly from customer-supplied data, virtually eliminating any chance of data entry errors. It also manages revision control. These features significantly reduce the time taken to prepare a job for production.

Other benefits relate to documentation accessibility and understanding. Aegis MOS can import and merge a customer’s CAD and BOM files to create a live, working visual aid that can be utilized in any aspect of production. All the documentation generated can easily be accessed from the system,eliminating the time and problems associated with pulling and managing data files. The Badger production team also appreciates how the software delivers a consistent method to control production programs and processes.

Badger Technologies provides its innovative electronics manufacturing services across a broad range of industries including medical device manufacturing, industrial controls, aerospace and defense, transportation equipment, consumer electronics, and testing & measurement equipment. These are all commercially, technically and environmentally demanding applications which call for highly competitive lead times as well as impeccable product quality.

“With all of the process enhancements AEGIS provides, this NPI software reduces the time required to ready a job for build,” comments Chad Notebaert, Manufacturing Engineering manager at Badger Technologies. “These factors will certainly help Badger in our continued goal to provide the highest quality product to our customers in a timeline that exceeds expectation.”

APEX FA’s Matthew Conway guest lecturer at Penn State Berks

USA: SMT equipment and process specialist Apex Factory Automation this week provided engineering students at Penn State Berks with knowledge and insight into the circuit board assembly industry in lectures by Program Development director, Matt Conway.

Two presentations explained PCBA processes from through hole to fine pitch surface mount, including the symbiotic relationship between product development and process and component packaging evolution. And in turn,the smaller and more complex components present new quality concerns that ultimately result in quality production equipment such as 3D AOI, reflow oven profiler systems, and 3D SPI systems.

Matt explained, "I enthusiastically accepted the invitation to speak to these engineering students for several reasons, not the least of which was the opportunity to help bring new talent and new ideas into our highly specialized segment of electronics."

Penn State Engineering student Bobby Bowlin found the presentation to be: "Very informative and thorough. I particularly liked the way in which several topics that we have studied individually were brought together into one perspective which to me increased the relevance of each."

Delivering an entirely new experience in process applications, technical service and commercial support to the North American PCBA marketplace, the Apex FA team works alongside customers to select and customize an optimized SMT production line for every manufacturing requirement – from low to high volume.

Dolby rocks the cloud

LAS VEGAS, USA: Dolby Laboratories Inc. announced that some of the world’s leading providers of cloud-encoding solutions have chosen Dolby to raise the bar and give customers what they demand, which is amazing sound.

Cloud encoding and media management is hitting the mainstream and leading companies like Microsoft Corp.’s recently announced Windows Azure Media Services, Encoding.com, Zencoder, Digital Rapids, Nativ, and Linkotec are including Dolby Digital Plus technology in their cloud-based encoding and media-management platforms to deliver high-quality multichannel audio and premium video content to a broad range of services and devices. Offering a superior audio and video experience to their customers takes these cloud-encoding solutions to a higher level. It also offers more choices to premium content owners for their professional content production encoding and transcoding needs.

“Microsoft is pleased to be working with Dolby,” said Brian Goldfarb, director, product marketing at Microsoft. “The scalability and elasticity of Windows Azure is highly suited to the demands of high-quality audio and video. Windows Azure Media Services is a natural solution for delivering Dolby Digital Plus, with its high scalability and high-quality multichannel audio and premium video content.”

“Professional content publishing is quickly moving to the cloud,” said Jon Dahl, CEO, Zencoder. “Broadcasters and studios are increasingly looking to use cloud resources for their video encoding, and Dolby Digital Plus is a critical part of these workflows.”

“The ‘TV everywhere’ initiatives driven by our media and entertainment customers demand professional audio capabilities,” said Jeff Malkin, president, Encoding.com. “Supporting Dolby Digital Plus was a natural choice for us to exceed our customers’ requirements.”

“Our MioEverywhere media-management platform is installed in the Switch SuperNAP data center in Las Vegas, providing world-class security and connectivity with the flexibility of the cloud on a transactional basis,” said Jon Folland, CEO, Nativ, “and Dolby Digital Plus is a key part of that offering.”

“As we extend our on-premises media-processing solutions into the cloud, the capabilities we offer in the cloud must match those available in our facility-based systems,” said Darren Gallipeau, product manager, Digital Rapids. “Dolby Digital Plus is a critical element of our solutions and of the expanding ecosystem for our Kayak technology platform, and we’re pleased to be extending our support of the technology.”

“The number of devices and services that support high-definition entertainment is growing exponentially, and cloud-encoding services must be ready to deliver the premium experiences that consumers demand,” said Jean-Christophe Morizur, senior director, Professional Solutions, Dolby Laboratories. “Dolby Digital Plus is a powerful and efficient way to bring high-quality audio to multiple platforms.”

JTAG partners with Sanmina-SCI

EINDHOVEN, THE NETHERLANDS: JTAG Technologies, a leading provider of IEEE std. 1149.x boundary-scan test equipment, announced that Sanmina-SCI, a leading manufacturing solutions company making some of the world’s most complex and valuable optical, electronic and mechanical products, will be using JTAG’s Boundary Scan Tools for Prototype Testing at its Haukipudas Oy facility.

Boundary-Scan has increasingly gained in popularity as an effective test technology for today’s electronic systems. Of course, various parts of a system can still be tested effectively with the traditional ICT or Flying Probe test methods. But the result using Boundary Scan is an all-embracing test strategy with a high test coverage for both the digital and analogue sections in a platform for the use in prototype testing , manufacturing test and in-system programming.

Sanmina SCI Plant manager, Eeva-Liisa Kylmänen, said: “We provide excellent local knowledge and detailed product expertise and excellent support to our existing or new customers. The JTAG Technologies’ testing capability enhances e.g. our test services/tools in our NPI (New Product Introduction) function. Together with FPT (Flying Probe Test) and/or AOI (Automatic Optical Inspection) JTAG testing provides good test coverage for Prototype Testing.”

Peter van den Eijnden, MD, JTAG Technologies, comments: “ We are delighted with this extended partnership with Sanmina SCI as we complement each other in support and knowledge for the growing Finnish EMS market. Through this partnership Sanmina SCI can broaden its boundary-scan technology knowledge and service to its current and new customers.”