News in brief: Handset market, Cascade Microtech
Nokia, the leading handset maker with a 35.1% share of the market, estimated that first-quarter shipments were around 98 million units. However, Strategy Analytics says that Nokia s figures ignore a large number of small handset vendors in China and Europe.
Nokia and second place Motorola saw their market shares fall (to 15.4% in Motorola s case) during the quarter. Samsung s share rose to 12.8%, while Siemens slipped to 7.4%. LG had 5.2% of the market.
Samsung s success is partly due to the strong growth in CDMA handset shipments, which grew by 49% as a result of new CDMA networks in China and India. GSM shipments grew by 13%.
Cascade Microtech announces strategic licensing agreement with Tokyo Seimitsu
Cascade Microtech, a manufacturer of wafer probe cards and probe stations for laboratory-grade parametric testing of semiconductor devices, has licensed essential RF measurement technology to Tokyo Seimitsu Co., Ltd., a supplier of manufacturing equipment and measurement instruments for the semiconductor industry.
The technology transfer will lead to faster and more accurate RF testing of advanced semiconductor devices during production, including high-speed telecommunications and wireless devices.
“Cascade is clearly the world leader in RF probing innovations for the research-and-development environment, where measurements must be at least an order of magnitude more precise than those of production tests,” says Masakuni Matsuda, senior executive officer of Tokyo Seimitsu. “Our license agreement with Cascade will enable Tokyo Seimitsu to adapt its wafer probers to better meet the emerging RF production test needs of major semiconductor manufactures.”
