Taiwanese integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services providers are expected to see their sales pick up in the second quarter on the back of solid demand for mobile devices, helping them emerge from the slow season effects seen in the previous quarter, market analysts said yesterday.
Rising popularity of smartphones and tablet computers in the global market is expected to boost demand for high-end IC packaging and testing services in the current quarter, the analysts said.
China is gearing up to develop its fourth-generation (4G) telecom services, which is expected to lift demand for wireless communication chips and memory chips, eventually increasing demand for IC packaging and testing services, they said.
With the global semiconductor industry staging a strong technical rebound in the second quarter after inventory adjustments in the previous quarters, the IC packaging and testing sector is expected to benefit from the uptrend, the analysts said.
Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密), one of Taiwan’s leading IC packaging and testing services providers, expects the market supply to become tighter on strong demand for mobile devices, the analysts added.
Last month, Siliconware announced it would capital expenditure for this year significantly to NT$14.7 billion (US$485 million) from the previously proposed NT$5.1 billion.
The company said demand for both bumping services and flip chips has been on the rise, and that it expects its capacity utilization for producing flip chips and offering bumping services to increase accordingly.
For its part, Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc (ASE, 日月光半導體), the world’s largest IC packaging and testing services provider, is also expected to ride the wave of growing shipments in mobile devices to boost its sales for the second quarter.
In addition, ASE, which accounts for about 30 percent of the global IC packaging and testing sales, is likely to get permission from the authorities to have its K7 plant in Greater Kaohsiung restore full operations at the end of this month at the earliest, which could further boost the company’s revenue in the second quarter.
ASE was ordered to shut down part of the K7 plant’s operations in December last year due to pollution problems.
King Yuan Electronics Co (京元電) is expected to see orders piling up into June, in particular in testing services for communication ICs, logic ICs, drive ICs and imaging sensor chips, analysts said.
They said Powertech Technology Inc’s order backlog is likely to continue to July and that the company will post revenue gains due to rising packaging and testing demand for services for specialty memory and mobile memory chips.
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