about-electronics.eu

GPS Business News: Switzerland-based SVOX, a provider of text to speech (TTS) solutions to the automotive and wireless industries announced today the acquisition of the Professional Speech Processing Group of Siemens AG. This unit, specializing in speech recognition and Voice dialog engine, has a staff of about 20 people and was working for customers such as Volkswagen and Continental.

The intellectual property acquired from Siemens was developed over 25 years and include more than 60 patent families.

“In the past SVOX has only been providing technology for making cars and portable devices talk
to you,” explained Volker Jantzen. “As a result of this deal, we are now able to make those devices also understand what you are saying. A real dialog between you and the machine is therefore now possible”.

read more

NaviGadget: European car maker Seat is offering a new breed of GPS navigation system which is DVD based but also comes with a 30GB hard disk drive. This new add-on will set you back €2115 – way above what you would pay for an after market GPS navigation system.The device is actually built by Siemens and the mapping data comes from Navteq. The new sat nav systems is available for order as an option on all Leon, Altea, Altea XL, Altea Freetrack 4 and Toledo models.

Seat’s new GPS navigation systems feature a large, 6.5″ touch screen and it also doubles as a CD/DVD player capable of handling various file formats including CD-A, MP3, WAV and WMA. On top of that, it can read from most mainstream media types such as CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW etc.

With these DVD-based GPS navigation systems what comes to mind usually is if you can listen to music or watch something while navigating. With Seat, this is possible but you’ll have to store the whole mapping data on to the HDD. However you’ll still have 20GB of space left for your other files. Oh, and about watching DVD’s on your console: Only when the vehicle is stationary.

read more

EETimes: After having experienced pressure from the supervisory board, Siemens CEO Klaus Kleinfeld has decided to leave the company after the expiration of his contract in September 2007.In the run-up to the supervisory board meeting scheduled for Wednesday (April 25), rumors have been rampant that the board would delay Kleinfeld’s contract extension in order to enable a ‘clean new start’ for the company after the bribery scandal presently under scrutiny. (…)

read more

ZDNet: Google has knocked Microsoft off the top spot and been named the most powerful global brand of 2007 in a recently published ranking. It’s the second year in a row a tech brand has beaten household names such as Coca-Cola, Marlboro and Toyota.

AE: When focusing on brands you might come across when reading the About Electronics website, we noticed: 12. Nokia 16. Apple 22. Vodafone 23. NTT DoCoMo 44. Samsung 55. Sony 60. Motorola 71. Siemens

read more

Heise: On April 1, NSN (a joint venture of Nokia and Siemens) went into operation. But this news probably did not please the 60,000 employees of the new joint venture called Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), especially the 37,000 who used to work for Siemens. They used to be part of the now dissolved Com Division and have already suffered from the effects of the scandal surrounding the bribery payments made by Siemens’ former communication division. The scandals were one reason why the founding of this joint venture was postponed from the beginning of the year and Siemens was forced to invest 300 million additional euro in the new firm. (more…)

read more

Heise: The network equipment joint venture by Nokia and Siemens will as expected commence operations in the second quarter of 2007. Nokia Siemens Networks would begin operations on April 1, Siemens, according to the German news agency dpa, declared on Wednesday. This also emerges from Nokia’s mandatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Both companies will contribute their network infrastructure business and its respective assets to the new 50/50 joint venture, it says in the statements. Both partners had moreover agreed to increase the net assets they would be contributing to Nokia Siemens Networks. The assets supplied by Siemens would hence now come to 2.4 billion euros and those by Nokia to 1.7 billion euros. (…)

read more

Heise: The launch of the network infrastructure joint venture between Nokia and Siemens will be delayed by the corruption scandal that has engulfed the German group. The launch was now expected to take place in the first quarter of 2007, Nokia and Siemens declared in Espoo in Finland yesterday. Until recently the two companies had assumed that the joint venture would commence operations at the beginning of next year. The reason for the delay was the corruption scandal Siemens was having to deal with, the companies stated. The scandal extended to Siemens divisions that are to form part of the new company, the companies explained. Nokia would contribute to the effort to clear up the allegations, it was said.

read more

Heise: Siemens’ struggling network division is even hard for Nokia to stomach: on Tuesday, the world’s largest cell phone manufacturer lowered its earnings forecast for the next few years. At an investor conference held on Tuesday in Amsterdam, Nokia said its operative margin would probably be around 15 percent. Up to then, 17 percent had been expected.

Nokia said it lowered its forecast due to the greater dependence on the redesigned network division Nokia Siemens Networks, which will have a much lower margin than the cell phone division. A few months ago, the two companies resolved to merge their network divisions. The joint operation will reportedly go into business in January 2007. Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo expects slight growth in this field of business over the next few years. The operative margin will be around ten percent.

read more

Heisse: Siemens will be allowed to merge its network infrastructure division with that of the Finnish Nokia group. The transaction would not jeopardize free competition in the business segment, the EU Commission found on Monday in Brussels after studying the implications of the possible merger from the vantage point of competition policy and law for four weeks.

Market leader Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent both exerted enough competitive pressure in the mobile-phone network equipment sector, the EU Commission declared.

With the completion of the merger Nokia will take control of the newly founded company Nokia Siemens Networks, to which both Nokia and Siemens will contribute their mobile and fixed-line phone network equipment businesses.

read more

Heise: The memory of the negative headlines of the last days and weeks centering on the bankruptcy of BenQ Mobile and the salary increase of the group’s board of management Siemens is now trying to wipe away with a slew of positive balance-sheet figures.

The radical restructuring of the German electronics group, which included among other moves the controversial sale of its loss-making mobile handset business to BenQ, has apparently had an effect. In fiscal 2005/06, which ended on September 30, Siemens was able to boost its bottom-line profits by 38 percent to 3.1 billion euros. The operating result of the divisions went up year-on-year by twelve percent to just under 5.3 billion euros.

While presenting the company’s balance sheet the group’s CEO Klaus Kleinfeld made it clear on Thursday that Siemens expected all group divisions to make the necessary effort to meet the ambitious rate of return targets by next spring: “We have never been in a better position to reach this goal,” he said.

read more

Gizmodo: Siemens VDO has developed a new system that ‘reads’ traffic signs whilst you’re driving.

A camera scans the field ahead while an onboard computer searches for patterns.

In the case that a speed limit sign is detected, a windshield display will place the new speed limit next to your current rate of travel.

The system can also be configured to automatically adjust your cruise control accordingly.

The system will be commercially available in 2008.

read more

Yahoo: Siemens AG tried Sunday to blunt fierce criticism from politicians, labor unions and the media for unloading its mobile phone business on a Taiwanese company which has failed to keep it afloat.

The German electronics and engineering conglomerate ceded its unprofitable handset business to Taiwan’s BenQ Corp. last year as part of a restructuring drive under chief executive Klaus Kleinfeld. (…)

However, BenQ unexpectedly pulled the plug last week, saying it could not afford to pump in more capital and that it saw only “a very slim chance” of turning the business around.

BenQ Mobile filed for insolvency protection on Friday and a court-appointed administrator said Saturday that he had three months to try to salvage it.

With 3,000 German jobs at stake, labor leaders and politicians have accused Siemens as well as BenQ of betrayal and are putting massive pressure on the Munich-based company to step in to help.

read more