The semiconductor sector is expected to benefit from the growth of wearable devices in the next few years, SinoPac Securities Investment Service (永豐投顧) said in a report on Tuesday.
Wearable devices are electronic gadgets that combine computing technology and built-in mobile Internet access with embedded sensors that can respond to the wearer’s movements.
As a result, the availability of various sensors will trigger demand of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), thereby boosting the proportion of semiconductor components in such devices, SinoPac said.
In October last year, Gartner Inc said MEMS sensors and microcontroller units such as gyroscopes, accelerometers, electronic compasses and pressure sensors would become popular in mobile devices over the next few years, making them one of the major drivers of the global semiconductor industry.
While wearable devices have yet to mature or become a trend, analysts say more smart bracelets, watches and other products are likely to emerge in the next two years to drive growth in the wearable device segment, following in the footsteps of Google Glass, Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch and Nike’s FuelBand bracelet.
The Industrial Economics and Knowledge Research Center (IEK) has predicted the global market value of wearable devices could reach US$5.5 billion this year, up 83.3 percent from last year.
The figure is estimated to increase 72.7 percent to US$9.5 billion next year and expand another 68.4 percent to US$16 billion in 2016, the Taiwan-based researcher said. By 2018, the global market value of wearable devices is estimated to reach US$35 billion, it said.
Against this backdrop, the proportion of semiconductor components used in wearable devices is estimated to hit 18.3 percent in 2018 from 16.8 percent this year, SinoPac said in the report, citing IEK’s forecast.
The global market value of semiconductor components used in wearable devices will also expand at an annual composite growth rate of 53.2 percent to US$6.41 billion in 2018 from US$920 million this year, the report said.
SinoPac said companies in Taiwan’s semiconductor sector such as wafer foundries and chip packagers were likely to secure outsourcing orders from global integrated device manufacturers in the international MEMS supply chain.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Avanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (ASE, 日月光), the world’s largest chip packaging and testing company, IC testing service provider King Yuan Electronics Co (京元電) and memorychip testing service firm Lingsen Precision Industries Ltd (菱生) are likely to enjoy technological and cost advantages over their domestic peers in the coming years, SinoPac said.
Shares of TSMC closed out the year at NT$105.50 on Tuesday, up 8.76 percent for the whole of last year, while ASE finished the year up 9.92 percent at NT$27.7, according to the Taiwan Stock Exchange’s data. King Yuan rose 10.54 percent over the last 12 months at NT$20.45 and Lingsen moved up 6.6 percent to NT$16.15, the exchange’s data showed.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
The founder of Chinese property giant Evergrande Group (恆大集團) has pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and bribery, a court said yesterday, the latest blow for what was once the country’s leading developer. Evergrande’s rise was propelled by decades of rapid urbanization and rising living standards, but in 2020, its access to credit dramatically narrowed when the government introduced curbs on excessive borrowing and speculation. The company defaulted in 2021 after struggling to repay creditors. Founder Xu Jiayin (許家印), 67, known as Hui Ka Yan in Cantonese, was reportedly held by police in 2023, with Evergrande saying he had been subjected to
RSS