New semiconductor manufacturing

AMD and Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) have created a US headquartered semiconductor manufacturing company to address growing demand for independent foundry production capabilities. The new global company will be temporarily called “The Foundry Company.” At the same time, the Mubadala Development Company will increase its current investment in AMD to 19.3 percent.

AMD will contribute to The Foundry Company (www.newglobalfoundry.com) its manufacturing facilities, including two fabrication facilities in Dresden, Germany, as well as related assets and intellectual property rights. ATIC will invest $2.1 billion to purchase its stake in The Foundry Company, of which it will invest $1.4 billion directly in the new entity and the remainder will be paid to AMD to purchase additional shares in The Foundry Company. The Foundry Company will also assume approximately $1.2 billion of AMD’s existing debt.

ATIC has committed additional equity funding to The Foundry Company of a minimum of $3.6 billion and up to $6.0 billion over the next five years to fund the expansion of The Foundry Company’s chip-making capacity beyond the manufacturing facilities initially contributed by AMD. These funds will be used by The Foundry Company to proceed with capacity expansion at its manufacturing facility in Dresden, including an upgrade of one of its fabs to a state-of-the-art facility.

Construction will also begin on a state-of-the-art facility in Saratoga County, New York. The New York facility is expected to create more than 1,400 direct jobs, and, through its operation, to generate an additional 5,000 jobs in the region. Once operational, the New York facility will be the only independently-managed, leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing foundry in the United States.

The Board of Directors of The Foundry Company will be equally divided between representatives of AMD and ATIC. AMD will own 44.4 percent and ATIC will own 55.6 percent of The Foundry Company’s fully-converted common stock upon its formation. Doug Grose will relinquish his current role as AMD’s senior vice president of manufacturing operations to become chief executive officer of The Foundry Company.

Hector Ruiz will relinquish his current role as AMD’s executive chairman and chairman of the board to become chairman of The Foundry Company. Upon closing of the transaction, The Foundry Company will commence operations with approximately 3,000 employees who will transition into the new company from AMD facilities in Silicon Valley, New York, Dresden, and Austin. The new company’s principal headquarters will be in Silicon Valley and its research and development and manufacturing leadership teams and ecosystems will be based in New York, Dresden, and Austin. After the upgrade and expansion in Dresden and the build-out of the New York facility, The Foundry Company envisions expanding its global manufacturing footprint over time, if commercially justified, to also include new fabrication facilities in Abu Dhabi.

New GM for HP PSG ME

Anil Kumar has become general manager of the Personal Systems Group (PSG) for HP Middle East. HP’s Personal Systems Group is responsible for supplying simple, affordable personal computing solutions and devices that are used by both consumers and businesses. This group includes desktop PCs, notebooks, workstations, thin clients, handhelds, displays, personal devices and emerging technologies. Anil replaces Serdar Urcar who has begun his new role as managing director and TSG lead at HP Turkey

According to Kumar, over the next 12 months he plans to focus on, "expanding Store-in-Store initiatives across the region, so consumers can profit from more hands-on experience especially on our niche products. We will continue to expand our presence in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Levant and focus on improving the return on investment for our customers through virtualization solutions and Green PC initiatives."

Yamli for any website

Yamli.com has released an application program interface (API) that allows the integration of its award-winning Arabic transliteration technology into any website. Yamli's Smart Arabic Keyboard allows users to type Arabic using Latin characters, converting their words in real time into Arabic text. Third-party websites using the API can reach a larger group of Arabic speaking visitors who would otherwise find typing Arabic difficult.

“We are very excited about making this technology available to any website for free,” said Yamli.com co-founder Habib Haddad. “We hope it will encourage every user to be more engaged with the Arabic language not only on Yamli.com but on all Arabic sites and blogs. Our approach makes a significant contribution to the Arabic Web by actually reducing the proliferation of transliterated Arabic words and converting them into real Arabic words.”

Various studies show that a large portion of Arabic Internet users shy away from typing Arabic, choosing instead to write Arabic phonetically using Latin characters in an ad-hoc and informal fashion. The transliteration of Arabic words and the limited availability of Arabic keyboards have stymied the use of Arabic on the Web. The technology allows users to fully engage with Arabic content on blogs, e-commerce, social networking, education, government, video and music websites.

The API has been undergoing testing since March with selected partners. Get more info about it from www.yamli.com/api.

Prepaid mobile fuels subscriber growth

According to Informa Telecoms & Media, during 2007 and into 2008, the market for prepaid mobile services has continued to grow more than twice as fast as the contract market. At the end of 2007, there were 2.33 billion prepaid subscriptions in the world. Prepaid services generated $241.9 billion in revenues for mobile network operators in 2007. By far the largest prepaid market was Asia Pacific, with 43 percent of global subscriptions and almost 30 percent of revenues.

The number of people owning multiple SIMs continues to rise, and at the end of 2008 about 28.9 percent of reported subscriptions worldwide will be accounted for by secondary or tertiary SIM card ownership. Informa Telecoms & Media predicts that by 2013 there will be 3.93 billion prepaid subscriptions, generating revenues of $382.2 billion. Although prepaid subscription growth will slow down to a global CAGR of just over 9 percent from 2007-2013, the prepaid market will still account for over 80 percent of new mobile subscriptions over the period.