Kingston tops DRAM market
Kingston Technology Corp (金士頓) retained its top position in the global DRAM module market last year by revenue, while Adata Technology (威剛) saw its ranking climb to the second spot from No. 4, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report yesterday.
With US$3.59 billion in revenue, US-based Kingston seized 49.2 percent of the market totaling US$7.3 billion last year, according to TrendForce’s tallies.
Taiwan’s Adata expanded its market share to 8.66 percent last year from 5.33 percent in 2012 as its revenue more than doubled to US$632 million from US$292 million in the previous year.
Ramaxel Technology (Shenzhen) Co (記憶科技) saw its ranking fall one notch to No. 3 from No. 2 last year on revenue of US$598 million.
Cathay Securities profit rises
Cathay Securities Corp (國泰證券), a securities trading arm of Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), yesterday said that its pretax profit for the first half of this year doubled from a year earlier, with analysts attributing the growth to a strong rebound in the local bourse.
In the past six months, Cathay Securities posted NT$250 million (US$8.33 million) in pretax profit, up 128 percent from a year earlier, to surpass NT$230 million recorded for the whole of last year, the brokerage said.
In the same period, earnings per share (EPS) before tax e stood at NT$0.53, up 104 percent from a year earlier, the highest level in the brokerage’s history, it added.
HTC shifting personnel
Smartphone vendor HTC Corp (宏達電) has appointed chief financial officer Chang Chia-lin (張嘉臨) as co-head of its smartphone business in a series of personnel changes that include the resignation of marketing head Ben Ho (何永生).
Chang and chief engineering officer David Chen (陳文俊) will take on additional roles to jointly run the business, chief executive officer Peter Chou (周永明) said in a memo to employees that was obtained by Bloomberg News on Wednesday.
A new emerging devices team managed by Mike Woodward and an engineering team led by WH Liu, will report directly to Chou, the memo said.
Fred Liu (劉慶東), who joined the company in 1998 and most recently held the post of president of engineering and operations, will move away from a day-to-day role and take an advisory position.
MediaTek comes in third
Handset chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) was ranked the world’s third-largest supplier of smartphone chips in the first quarter of the year, Strategy Analytics said a report on Tuesday.
It said Qualcomm Inc maintained its strong lead in the smartphone applications processor market during the January-to-March period with a 53 percent revenue share, followed by Apple Inc with 16 percent and MediaTek with 13 percent.
Samsung Electronics Co and Spreadtrum Communications Inc were ranked the fourth and fifth-largest in that market, the report said.
Overall, the market for global smartphone applications processors registered an impressive 25 percent year-on-year growth in the first quarter, reaching US$4.7 billion, Strategy Analytics said.
Asustek seeking engineers
PC vendor Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) plans to hire hundreds of engineers this year as it expands into the new fields of mobile computing and cloud computing.
Asustek said it is looking for personnel with skills in either hardware or software design or online services.
It is to hold a recruiting event at its headquarters in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投) on Aug. 2.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
NATURAL PARTNERS: Taiwan and Japan have complementary dominant supply chain positions, are geographically and culturally close, and have similar work ethics Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and other related companies would add ￥11.2 trillion (US$78.31 billion) to Japan’s chipmaking hot spot Kumamoto Prefecture over the next decade, a local bank’s analysis said. Kyushu Financial Group, a lender based in Kumamoto’s capital, almost doubled its projection for the economic impact that the chip sector would bring to the region compared to its estimate a year earlier, a presentation on Thursday said. The bank said that 171 firms had made new investments since November 2021, up from 90 in an earlier analysis. TSMC’s Kumamoto location was once a sleepy farming area, but has undergone
RSS