Business briefs
17 Jun 2002
Including news from Polatis, Furukawa, RSoft, Basler and Jerusalem Venture Partners.
UK-based
Polatis, a supplier of telecommunications equipment, is set to focus all of its resources on low-loss, modular, all-optical switch technology. The company will stop developing and marketing its actuated Bragg grating product range.
Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), an international communications venture capital firm, has closed the largest fund in its history. At USD 400 million, the JVP IV fund comprises a global network of limited partners including,
France Telecom,
Nortel Networks
and
Infineon and has already spawned seven new communication companies.
Basler of Germany, a manufacturer of vision systems, has implemented reduced staff numbers and operating costs. The company posted a 33% decrease in sales in the third quarter and blames the current economic situation as well as the global market weakness in the optical data storage industry.
Furukawa Electric, Japan, has announced a group net profit for the last 6 months of USD 183.2 million, down 79.4% year-on-year. Furukawa and its US-based partner
CommScope have recently acquired the optical fiber division of
Lucent Technologies making the group one of the largest fiber optics manufacturers in the world, second only to
Corning.
US-based
RSoft, a developer of software for the photonics and fiber-optics industries, has joined forces with fellow US-based software company
Network Design Tools. The new company will supply performance, optimization, modeling and simulation software for optical component design.
