The world’s top 10 IC design companies would face headwinds this year, after most of them enjoyed revenue growth last year, market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Feb. 27.
The top 10 IC design companies would be dragged down by numerous factors, such as a continued decline in smartphone growth, limited 5G penetration and low production and sales for foldable smartphones, TrendForce analyst Yao Chia-yang (姚嘉洋) said in a research note.
Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co (華為) is still taking a rather aggressive stance in the smartphone market, which is bound to limit the performance of other smartphone brands and hurt the performance of Qualcomm Inc and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) this year, Yao said.
TrendForce said its cautious outlook for the top 10 also reflects a potential decline in server demand and persistent weakness in the global car market, Yao said.
The researcher’s latest tallies showed that Broadcom Inc, Qualcomm and Nvidia Corp retained the top three places in the IC design business in terms of revenue.
MediaTek, Novatek Microelectronics Corp (聯詠) and Realtek Semiconductor Corp (瑞昱) ranked fourth, eighth and ninth.
Eight of the 10 largest IC design companies reported revenue growth last year, although several posted lower-than-expected revenue in the final quarter of the year, TrendForce said.
Qualcomm and MediaTek were the only two who saw revenue fall, the researcher said.
Qualcomm’s revenue declined 3.9 percent from 2017 to US$16.37 billion due to weak smartphone demand, while MediaTek’s revenue fell 0.7 percent to US$7.88 billion, but the decline was just 0.1 percent in New Taiwan dollar terms, it said.
Broadcom, Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Xilinx Inc, Novatek and Realtek reported revenue growth mainly thanks to steady growth momentum in end markets such as telecom infrastructure, data centers and TVs, TrendForce said.
At the same time, Marvell Technology Group Ltd and Dialog Semiconductor PLC saw revenue rise on the back of acquisitions, it said.
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
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
Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) latest smartphones carry a version of the advanced made-in-China processor it revealed last year, results from an independent analysis showed. This underscored the Chinese company’s ability to sustain production of the controversial chip. The Pura 70 series unveiled last week sports the Kirin 9010 processor, research firm TechInsights found during a teardown of the device. This is a newer version of the Kirin 9000s, made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) for the Mate 60 Pro, which had alarmed officials in Washington who thought a 7-nanometer chip was beyond China’s capabilities. Huawei has enjoyed a resurgence since
purpose: Tesla’s CEO sought to meet senior Chinese officials to discuss the rollout of its ‘full self-driving’ software in China and approval to transfer data they had collected Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing yesterday on an unannounced visit, where he is expected to meet senior officials to discuss the rollout of "full self-driving" (FSD) software and permission to transfer data overseas, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Chinese state media reported that he met Premier Li Qiang (李強) in Beijing, during which Li told Musk that Tesla's development in China could be regarded as a successful example of US-China economic and trade cooperation. Musk confirmed his meeting with the premier yesterday with a post on social media platform X. "Honored to meet with Premier Li