Silicon substrate maker Kinsus Interconnect Technology Corp (景碩科技) is attempting to expand beyond handsets and base station applications and into wearable devices, Yuanta Securities Corp (元大證券) said yesterday.
“For the first time, we learned that Kinsus is exploring a fresh business opportunity in new substrates with a US client for wearable devices,” Yuanta analyst Andrew Chen (陳治宇) said in a note to clients.
The analyst did not identify the US client, the type of wearable device Kinsus is working on or its timeline for production ramp-up.
“From what was disclosed, it is a new substrate type based on new designs that may employ the existing roll-to-roll [manufacturing process] used for LDI [laser direct imaging] packaging, but with new core materials,” he said.
While Chen did not elaborate in his note about Kinsus’ plan, the move may open up opportunities for the company, which is not immune to inventory digestion within the semiconductor supply chain, let alone slowing smartphone orders and rising pricing competition.
On Tuesday, the company said its revenue declined for the second straight month last month to NT$2.02 billion (US$687 million) from NT$2.05 billion in August.
However, last quarter’s revenue still increased 4.9 percent quarter-on-quarter and 9.8 percent year-on-year to NT$6.15 billion, the second-highest level ever for the firm, the company said.
Kinsus’ substrate products are mainly used in communications devices. However, slower growth in smartphones in recent months has dragged down demand for application processor, baseband, radio frequency and wireless networking chips, which in turn has affected the company.
In addition, rising competition in the flip-chip substrate market could be a potential risk for Kinsus as existing players like Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co and Ibiden Co are aggressively promoting new products, while new players such as Unimicron Technology Corp (欣興電子) are lowering prices in pursuit of market share.
Revenue for this quarter is likely to decline 1.6 percent quarter-on-quarter to NT$6.13 billion as Kinsus’ IC substrate business will suffer from declining demand for communication and networking chips, SinoPac Securities Investment Service (永豐金投顧) analyst Chen Cheng-chieh (陳振傑) said yesterday in a separate note.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS