SEMICONDUCTORS
Foundry market grows
The worldwide semiconductor foundry market grew last year, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) taking a nearly 50 percent share of the market, Gartner Inc said yesterday. The global semiconductor foundry market had sales of US$34.57 billion last year, up 16.2 percent from 2011, Gartner said, attributing the strong growth to the restocking of inventory by customers and higher demand for smartphones, in which advanced technology chips are required. TSMC had sales of US$17.13 billion last year, or a 49.5 percent share of the global market. Rounding out the world’s top five were GlobalFoundries Inc, United Microelectronics Corp (聯電), Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (中芯) and Samsung Electronics Co, Gartner said.
ELECTRONICS
Acer acts over bird flu
PC brand Acer Inc (宏碁) yesterday said it had initiated a strict health tracking mechanism for employees and told eight workers, who had recent contact with a man confirmed as Taiwan’s first patient infected by H7N9 bird flu, to work from home for seven days from Thursday. Acer’s move came after the company was informed by health authorities that the eight employees had spent time with the 53-year-old patient on Tuesday night at National Taiwan University Hospital. Acer would not confirm reports that the patient once worked for the company.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”