ARM Holdings PLC, whose chip designs power Apple Inc’s iPhone and iPad, reported higher first-quarter sales that beat analysts’ estimates as demand for its graphics and processing technology grew.
Revenue in the quarter ending last month rose 29 percent to £170.3 million (US$260 million), the Cambridge, England-based company said yesterday in a statement. Analysts had predicted £160 million, according to the average of a Bloomberg survey.
ARM’s chip designs compete with patents from semiconductor makers such as Intel Corp.
Second-quarter revenue would be in line with market expectations, ARM said in the statement, as first-quarter data “points to a sequential decrease in industry-wide revenues of about 10 percent.”
Analysts had predicted 161.9 million pounds in the second quarter, according to a Bloomberg survey.
The “Internet of things,” which include connected appliances such as thermostats that can be controlled with mobile phones, or wireless medical monitoring devices, represents one of ARM’s fastest-growing markets. The embedded-processing business grew 25 percent last year and ARM got more than half of its sales from products other than mobile phones for the first time in the third quarter of last year.
Global shipments of PCs, tablets and mobile phones would increase 9 percent to 2.4 billion units this year, according to a study released this month by researcher Gartner Inc.
Wireless devices would account for the growth as consumers swap PCs for lower-priced tablets and mobile phones, analyst Carolina Milanesi said in the report.
Separately, STMicroelectronics NV, Intel’s biggest competitor in Europe, forecast revenue that fell short of analysts’ estimates after demand in the wireless business failed to improve in the first quarter.
Second-quarter sales would grow by 3 percent from the previous period, plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, the chipmaker said on Monday. Analysts on average project a 6 percent increase to US$2.13 billion.
The first-quarter net loss was US$171 million, bringing total losses over the past six quarters to about US$1.3 billion, Geneva-based STMicroelectronics said.
Texas Instruments Inc, the largest maker of analog chips, on Monday forecast sales and profit that may top some analysts’ estimates, helped by increased orders from makers of automotive and industrial machine parts.
Profit in the current period are set to be between US$0.37 and US$0.45 a share on revenue of between US$2.93 billion and US$3.17 billion, the Dallas-based company said in a statement.
Analysts on average had estimated profit of US$0.38 and sales of US$3.04 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
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