Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), the nation’s biggest DRAM chipmaker, yesterday said net profits this quarter would be slightly higher than last quarter, benefiting from an increase in chip prices amid constant supply constraints.
“DRAM chips are still in short supply… Net profits will grow mildly in the second quarter, compared with the first quarter,” Nanya spokesman Lee Pei-ing (李培英) said by telephone after the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting.
The memorychip maker posted a quarterly net profit of NT$506 million (US$16.71 million) for the first three months of this year, marking its first quarterly net profit in three years. Nanya held a 3.8 percent share of the global DRAM market last quarter.
“Demand will remain quite good in the second half of this year. Chip prices will continue to go up mildly, as it did in the first quarter,” Lee said. “We are seeing steady growth from tablets, TVs, set-top boxes and mobile phones.”
In a change from the past years’ pattern, the DRAM industry has outgrown the PC industry, Lee said.
PC sales dropped 13.9 percent year on year, while the price of DRAM chips rebounded moderately, Lee said, adding that in addition to consumer electronics and mobile devices, the PC sector was also recovering.
Nanya’s shares plummeted 3.23 percent to NT$6 yesterday.
Prices of mainstream DDR3 128x8 DRAM chips slid 0.11 percent to US$1.825 per unit, according to Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技).
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