Prices of PC DRAM chips are expected to drop by less than 6 percent month-on-month this month on seasonally weak demand for PCs rather than overcapacity, boding well for chipmakers’ profitability this year, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said.
Prices for DRAM chips used in mobile phones remained flat this month from last month, while DRAM chips for servers fell by 1 percent to 3 percent, the local market researcher said.
However, prices for niche DRAM chips went up this month, against the overall downtrend, it said.
“The decline for PC DRAM chips is basically because of seasonal factors. No significant increase in supply is seen at this point,” TrendForce industry analyst Avril Wu (吳雅婷) said in a report on Tuesday.
In addition, overall DRAM chip prices are expected to rebound next quarter, backed by rising demand for smartphones, Wu said.
This year, new supply of PC DRAM chips is set to be limited, as the world’s major producers — including Samsung Electronics Co, Micron Technology Inc and SK Hynix Inc — are expected to boost output of memory chips used in mobile phones and servers to cope with rising demand, Wu said.
Locally, Powerchip Technology Corp (力晶半導體) plans to increase its output of 12-inch wafers by 30,000 a month for PC DRAM chipmaking in the first half of this year, Wu said.
However, Inotera Memories Inc (華亞科技), a DRAM joint venture between Micron and Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), has shifted its focus to making DRAM chips used in servers rather than PCs, accounting for 60 percent of its total production, Wu said.
JPMorgan Securities Ltd forecast that Inotera’s overall capacity would fall 9 percent annually this year, while net income would drop slightly to NT$$43.01 billion (US$1.36 billion) from its estimate of NT$44.4 billion, according to a report released on Thursday last week.
Nanya Technology has also transformed itself into a specialty DRAM chipmaker and upgraded to 30-nanometer technology, a generation more advanced than its rivals, Wu said.
The technology advantage would allow Nanya Technology to enjoy respectful profits this year, she said.
In contrast to scant expansion in supply, DRAM chip demand is expected to rise this year.
Apple Inc is expected to double memory space for its new-generation iPhone to 2 gigabytes from the existing 1GB, which would cause other mobile phone brands to follow suit and consequently spur demand for DRAM chips, Wu said.
Rising demand and increasing supply of higher-priced DDR4 DRAM chips would help bolster DRAM prices this year, Wu said.
Shares in Nanya ended up 0.13 percent to NT$76.9 yesterday in Taipei trading, while DRAM modules Apacer Technology Corp (宇瞻) shares rose 0.61 percent to NT$32.8 and Inotera declined 1.22 percent to NT$44.65.
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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts