 |
06 Dec 2002
Including news from Alcatel, Strategies Unlimited, Philips Electronics, Sumitomo Heavy Industry and more.
• French telecom equipment maker Alcatel has announced a fresh series of job cuts. Through closures and restructuring, the company's submarine networks group will axe 350 positions by the end of 2003 while 290 jobs will be lost in its optical fiber division over the same period.
• Philips Electronics is restructuring its optical storage business, which it hopes to bring back to profitability within six months. During 2003, the company will relocate its PC-related optical storage business to Taiwan to develop DVD+RW technology. The move will result in 345 job losses at the company's Hasselt facility in Belgium.
• US-based market analyst Strategies Unlimited is predicting a 30% year-on-year increase in the optical components market. "The market will be no means return to the heyday of 2000 anytime soon," said Tom Hausken, Optical Components Practice Director at Strategies unlimited. "We project component vendors' revenues in 2003 at USD 2.1 billion."
• SOPRA of France has granted Sumitomo Heavy Industry a licence to make and sell excimer laser annealing systems based on its technology. The systems are used to manufacture the thin-film transistors used on active-matrix liquid-crystal displays and organic light-emitting diode displays.
• CompuCyte, US, has named Olympus Optical of Japan as its exclusive distributor in Asia and Europe. CompuCyte makes automated, multi-laser-based instruments for cell and tissue analysis, which are targeted towards drug discovery.
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| © 2024 SPIE Europe |
|
