Taiwanese semiconductor companies are expected to post the first annual revenue declines this year since 2001, primarily because computer memory chipmakers are seeing a slowdown in demand amid the global economic crisis, a local research house said yesterday.
The industry slump may extend into the first half of next year, causing another 1.6 percent annual decrease in revenues for semiconductor companies, Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) said in its latest forecast.
Contract chipmakers, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s top contract chipmaker, may suffer the brunt by posting a 9.7 percent drop in revenues next year from this year, the Hsinchu-based ITRI said.
Local semiconductor companies may report an almost 4 percent fall in revenues for this year for a total NT$1.4 trillion (US$42.7 billion), from NT$1.47 trillion last year, under performing their global peers, which could still eke out 1.3 percent year-on-year growth, ITRI said.
“It will be the first time that local semiconductor companies report a revenue decline since 2001,” ITRI senior semiconductor analyst Vincent Lee (李冠樺) said.
This industrial downturn will be as severe as the one between 2000 and 2001, driven by excessive inventory, Lee said.
“This time, the problem is [stagnant] demand. Chip companies will recover as soon as demand rebounds because they are managing inventory better than in the last downturn,” Lee said.
Taiwanese computer memory chipmakers, or makers of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips, are to blame now for the first setback in seven years, Lee said.
Local DRAM companies, led by Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體), may post a 20 percent year-on-year decline in revenues this year following a 14 percent drop last year, the ITRI said.
The computer memory chipmakers made up a fifth of the overall revenues made by the nation’s semiconductor companies.
Prolonged industrial downturn may reshape the nation’s DRAM landscape probably in the second half of next year, if demand does not recover with help from the sale of Microsoft Corp’s new operating system, Lee said.
“Some familiar names may not exist anymore and some big names may take the chance for further expansion as it happens during downturns all the time,” Lee said.
“Starting 2010, you will see a completely different semiconductor landscape,” he said.
After losing a total of NT$90.92 billion in the first quarter this year, major DRAM players in Taiwan are on the verge of running out of cash, but not a single company has shown any intension of quitting the market yet.
“To save local DRAM companies, it is logical that a consolidation will do better than any other way,” Lee said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained