Sunday, June 16, 2019

Corning: Network Densification = Glassification

Speaking at an Investor Day event in New York, Corning CEO Wendell Weeks said the company expects 6%-8% compound annual sales growth for the 2020 to 2023 period primarily driven by organic growth in Corning's market-access platforms.

According to Corning estimates, about 100x more metro fiber is needed to connect a 5G network with dense small cells than was required to support 3G/4G networks. This is twice as fiber as required for FTTH in the same area.

In hyperscale data centers, a non-blocking optical is required to link compute, storage and networking resources. Corning estimates that the new data center network architecture requires 10 times more optical links. In fact, a single hyperscale data center can require more than one million fiber kilometers in a single campus -- the equivalent to FTTH in the entire Dallas suburbs.

The move to onboard optics in servers and switches will also impact fiber demand. The copackaging of optical transceivers with switch ASICs may lead to new types of fiber. Corning believes it is well-positioned for this transition.

For Corning, Densification = Glassification.

Corning outlined the following priorities and key drivers for the 2020 to 2023 period:
  • Optical Communications to grow approximately twice as fast as the passive optical market, driven by 5G and next-gen hyperscale data centers;
  • Automotive market sales to double by 2023, driven by growth in gasoline particulate filters and the company's new automotive glass solutions business;
  • Mobile Consumer Electronics market sales to continue on a path to doubling, as Corning captures more value per device and wins in new device categories with Corning Gorilla Glass and other innovations; 
  • Life Sciences Vessels market sales to grow at least double the industry rate, driven by cell and gene therapy-related demand; launch of Valor Glass for pharmaceutical packaging has potential to become a multi-billion-dollar franchise;
  • Display to be stable as price declines remain moderate, television screen size continues to increase, and Gen 10.5 plants come on line.
Corning also expects to invest $10 billion to $12 billion in RD&E, capital and mergers and acquisitions. Its primary focus on organic growth will continue.

"We believe that Corning is more resilient than at any point in its history," said Tony Tripeny, executive vice president and chief financial officer. "Our strategic investments are paying off and our relationships with industry-leading customers are creating new opportunities for collaboration and growth. Based on these factors and our record of execution, we are confident in our ability to meet the long-term goals we are setting today."

A webcast of the presentation is online (2 hours 43 minutes):
https://edge.media-server.com/m6/p/oeaqhoh6

https://investor.corning.com/investor-relations/default.aspx


Vodafone Spain launches 5G in 15 cities with Huawei

Vodafone España lauched commercial 5G service in 15 cities: Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Sevilla, Málaga, Zaragoza, Bilbao, Vitoria, San Sebastián, La Coruña, Vigo, Gijón, Pamplona, Logroño y Santander. This is the first commercial 5G launch in Spain.

Huawei has been a strategic network supplier to Vodafone since at least 2009. In 2014, Huawei was selected to will supply products and services for Vodafone radio access networks in 15 countries including the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Romania, Czech Republic, Hungary, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, South Africa, Mozambique, Lesotho, DRC and Ghana. The deployments use Huawei's SingleRAN solutions and beam-forming Active Antenna System.

For its 5G rollout, Vodafone España is using 90 MHz of contiguous spectrum in the 3.7 GHz band.

A premium 5G service tier is priced at EUR50 per month for unlimited data at the maximum rate available to the smartphone.

5G smartphones on offer include the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, LG V50 ThinQ 5G, and the Xiaomi Mi MIX3 5G.

In May, Vodafone completed the first international 5G roaming call between Spain and Portugal.

5G roaming to Germany, Italy, and the UK will be available later this summer.

Vodafone is also announcing an exclusive partnership with Hatch, a cloud gaming platform optimized for 5G.

As of June 2019, Huawei says it has secured 46 commercial 5G contracts and shipped over 100,000 5G base stations.

NXP's Ultra-wideband brings location positioning to centimeters

NXP Semiconductors introduced a next-generation Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) ranging technology designed for mobile, automotive, Internet-of-Things (IoT) and industrial.

The new UWB technology enables precision sensing, which creates a new dimension of spatial context for wireless devices.

NXP describes this new generation of UWB as a major evolutionary step from the existing wireless technologies, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS. Its ability to process contextual information such as the position of the UWB anchor, its movements, and distance to other devices with an unprecedented precision of a few centimeters, enables decision making and management of these devices to take place with high granularity.

NXP UWB enables accurate localization capabilities. Doors and points of entry will open once approaching them. Lights, audio speakers and any other connected devices with sensors will be able to follow consumers from one room to another, and smart connected technology will blend in more intuitively in people’s lives.

“NXP’s UWB sparks exciting new use cases that have never before been possible,” said Kurt Sievers, President at NXP. “The technology not only understands motion and relative positioning outdoors and indoors, but its real-time robust accuracy can change the way we drive efficiency in factories, play interactive games or use AR/AI applications on our phones. We’re excited to share news of our latest developments in this space to bring us into a new era of intuitive on-demand applications.”

Key UWB features:

  • UWB higher bandwidth channel provides greater instantaneous precision than existing wireless technologies in challenging environments, leading to an accuracy of a few centimeters.
  • UWB enables latency-sensitive applications, such as access, gaming, and AR, by an efficient Time-of-Flight calculation.
  • UWB adds a new level of security to car key fobs and can prevent relay attacks by distinguishing the authentic signal from the relayed/spoofed signal.

https://media.nxp.com