Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), the nation’s top maker of computer memory chips or dynamic random access memory (DRAM), yesterday announced that sales last month grew 97 percent on the back of recovering demand for its chips from PC makers.
Last month, sales jumped to NT$5.22 billion (US$166 million) from NT$2.65 billion in April last year. That represented a slight decline from March’s NT$5.26 billion in sales.
Nanya Technology said it raised contract prices by 10 percent last month, from March, matching the Taoyuan-based chipmaker’s forecast as customers built up as much inventory as possible to cope with expected strong PC replacement demand in the second half of this year.
Shipments, however, fell about 8 percent month-on-month last month as output declined during the migration to more cost-efficient 50-nanometer technology and next-generation DD3 chips.
The migration is expected to be completed later this quarter, paving the way for a significant increase in output in the second half of the year, the chipmaker said.
Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技), a DRAM joint venture between Nanya Technology and US memory giant Micron Technology Inc, yesterday said sales leapt 78.4 percent year-on-year, or 2.9 percent from the previous month, to NT$4.26 billion last month.
Powerchip Semiconductor Corp (力晶半導體), the nation’s No. 2 DRAM supplier, yesterday posted its strongest monthly sales in about three years.
Beating bigger rival Nanya Technology, Powerchip said sales last month grew more than six-fold to NT$7.53 billion, from NT$1.06 billion in April last year. That also meant about a 10 percent month-on-month increase, as recovering demand boosted prices and shipments, bucking the traditionally slow trend in the second quarter.
To cope with growing demand, Powerchip recently started supplying DRAM made by Rexchip Electronics Inc (瑞晶電子), a local joint venture with Japanese memory chipmaker Elpida Memories Inc, company spokesman Eric Tan (譚仲民) said in a company statement.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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