Keysight Technologies beat analysts’ expectations when it posted fourth-quarter and full-year results this week, with what company officials described as “strong profit in a soft market.” In terms of quarterly Keysight results, revenues were down 1% year-over-year and net income was $277 million. Net income for the fiscal year was up 31% to $513 million.
Keysight said its communications market revenues grew 3% (driven in part by its acquisition of Anite), and it saw 2% to 5% drops in its revenues from the industrial, computer and semiconductor market and aerospace and defense. The company’s sales grew in Asia-Pacific and Japan, it said, but saw declines in Europe and the Americas.
The company also said it has “tempered” its expectations for the first half of next year, leading it to slightly lower guidance. Keysight made a number of product launches this week as well, including adding Bluetooth audio measurement support to its U8903B audio analyzer; support for four-level pulsed amplitude modulation, or PAM-4, to its EEs of EDA Advanced Design System Channel Simulator; and new probes for testing electronic products under extreme hot and cold conditions.
–Spirent Communications made three launches this week, taking the company from its traditional sweet spot in lab testing, to simulating traffic in live networks for monitoring and troubleshooting purposes, as well as expanding its offerings in analytics with an eye to customer experience management. Landslide Edge and Landslide Core take its Landslide lab solution into the field with the capability to spin up virtual devices anywhere in the network and mimic user behavior in order to assess the customer experience and provide early warnings of network degradation, both deep in the network and its edge. Meanwhile, its new new InTouch Customer and Network Analytics solution is aimed at ensuring a good customer experience as well as troubleshooting, and can utilize Landslide Edge and Core. More information and interviews here.
-The Car Connectivity Consortium‘s MirrorLink solution for integrating smartphone applications with vehicle in-dash systems is now on the road to consideration as a standard by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, according to an agreement reached this week. The CCC noted its system is designed for maximum interoperability; and enables very large icons for good visibility for the the driver and only enables certain applications to be accessed based on whether the vehicle is in motion or parked.
–Anritsu said in response to customer demand it has added a video inspection probe mode to some of its Site Master models, allowing visual inspections on fiber optic connectors at cell sites. The new feature “specifically addresses the ever-growing requirement to inspect optical fiber cables used to carry traffic data and signaling up/down to/from the radio hardware in modern wireless communication systems,” Anritsu said, particularly in light of the fact that “dirty optical fiber connectors typically account for at least 75% of failures found in the field.”
Anritsu also this week added two options to its optoelectronic calibration modules designed to expand their range for measurements, and appointed company veteran Paul Innis to serve as VP and GM of its Americas sales region, which includes the U.S., Canada, Central and South America, and the Caribbean.
–Rohde & Schwarz launched a new family of entry-level mixed signal oscilloscopes, the HMO1202, with features it says are “exceptional” for the price point, including two analog and eight digital channels, a sampling rate up to 2 G samples/second and bandwidth up to 300 megahertz.
Rohde & Schwarz has said recently there is customer demand for standard test equipment at lower prices, and it would integrate its Hameg Instruments subsidiary completely into its Test and Measurement Division to support wider distribution of those lower-cost offerings.
-The Open Mobile Alliance plans to hold a series of events in January in San Diego, including a Testfest, focused on “Internet of Things” developers.
–EXFO received recognition this week from Frost & Sullivan as a global market leader in portable fiber optic test equipment.
