Infineon Technologies AG, Europe's second-biggest maker of semiconductors, won an order from credit card firm MasterCard Inc to deliver chips which allow contact-less payments.
MasterCard is currently introducing credit cards with these chips in 13 countries, including the US, Australia and Taiwan, Infineon said in a statement yesterday. Infineon also delivers such chips, which allow payments that don't require the card to be swiped magnetically, to MasterCard rival Visa International Inc. No financial details of the deal were given.
The order is a boost for Infineon's chief executive officer Wolfgang Ziebart, who planned to focus on tailor-made semiconductors for cellular phones, credit cards and cars after he split off the memory-chip division last year.
The market for contact less payments is expected to grow 63 percent on average every year in the next five years, Infineon said in the statement, citing a study of US market researcher Frost & Sullivan.
Infineon competitors in the market for credit card chips include South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co and Japan's Renesas Technology Corp. Infineon said it had a 2005 market share of 31 percent in the market for contact-less payments chips, which are also used in electronic passports and public transport tickets.
Infineon, based in Neubiberg near Munich, currently has orders for about 17 million credit card chips from MasterCard and Visa, the company said in the statement.
Shares of the company rose as much as 0.24 euros, or 2 percent, to 12.40 euros in Frankfurt yesterday and were trading at 12.35 euros as of 10:32am. The shares jumped 11 percent, the biggest gain in four years, on Wednesday after Infineon won an order to supply mobile phone chips to Nokia Oyj.
Nokia, the world's largest maker of handsets, will use Infineon's products in some of its lower-priced "entry-level" phones, the companies said in a statement on Wednesday. No financial details of the deal were given at the time.
The chipmaker is seeking new orders for its cellular-phone division after BenQ Mobile, Infineon's largest client, ran out of cash last year and went into liquidation in last month. The collapse forced Infineon to cut 400 jobs and delay some profit goals.
Nokia has increased sales in China and India, the world's fastest growing mobile-phone markets, spurring orders for chips used in lower-priced cellular phones.
The Nokia deal is a "major inflection point for Infineon's wireless communications business" and "increases the chances" to win other "significant" mobile phone chip contracts in the next 12 months, UBS analysts Jonathan Dutton and Ashish Jain wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday. They raised their rating on Infineon shares to "buy" from "neutral" and increased their target price to 14.30 euros from 12.50 euros.
POWERING UP: PSUs for AI servers made up about 50% of Delta’s total server PSU revenue during the first three quarters of last year, the company said Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) reported record-high revenue of NT$161.61 billion (US$5.11 billion) for last quarter and said it remains positive about this quarter. Last quarter’s figure was up 7.6 percent from the previous quarter and 41.51 percent higher than a year earlier, and largely in line with Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$160 billion. Delta’s annual revenue last year rose 31.76 percent year-on-year to NT$554.89 billion, also a record high for the company. Its strong performance reflected continued demand for high-performance power solutions and advanced liquid-cooling products used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers,
SIZE MATTERS: TSMC started phasing out 8-inch wafer production last year, while Samsung is more aggressively retiring 8-inch capacity, TrendForce said Chipmakers are expected to raise prices of 8-inch wafers by up to 20 percent this year on concern over supply constraints as major contract chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co gradually retire less advanced wafer capacity, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. It is the first significant across-the-board price hike since a global semiconductor correction in 2023, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report. Global 8-inch wafer capacity slid 0.3 percent year-on-year last year, although 8-inch wafer prices still hovered at relatively stable levels throughout the year, TrendForce said. The downward trend is expected to continue this year,
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
US actor Matthew McConaughey has filed recordings of his image and voice with US patent authorities to protect them from unauthorized usage by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, a representative said earlier this week. Several video clips and audio recordings were registered by the commercial arm of the Just Keep Livin’ Foundation, a non-profit created by the Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Camila, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office database. Many artists are increasingly concerned about the uncontrolled use of their image via generative AI since the rollout of ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools. Several US states have adopted
RSS