Phison Electronics Corp (群聯) customers have not scaled back orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but instead shifted demand to the second half of this year, driven by demand for 5G-related technologies, the company said yesterday.
The NAND flash memory controller supplier said the pandemic and large-scale lockdowns in China did not significantly affect its business, as reflected in its strong revenue last month.
That shows that market demand was “real,” the company said.
“We are optimistic about this year’s outlook,” Phison chairman Pua Khein-seng (潘健成) told a teleconference. “We are seeing a strong first quarter. Our first-quarter results will surprise you.”
Phison has been building NAND flash memorychip inventory since October last year to cope with rising demand, which caused supply constraints in January and have boosted flash memorychip prices by more than 50 percent, the company said.
“Demand is not vaporizing,” Pua said. “The pandemic just pushed back 5G deployment a little bit.”
He said that 5G technology would drive demand for data centers, base stations and related devices, fueling the strongest growth for flash products in 10 years.
Phison has received order backlogs for September and October this year with rush orders for solid state drive (SSD) controllers, which have high gross margin, he said.
“Customers from Europe, US, Japan and China have asked us to build inventory in advance as they are worried about a component crunch once demand comes back rapidly later this year,” Pua said.
“Customers have requested shipment of the goods they ordered as soon as the transportation ban is lifted,” he added.
Flash controllers contributed 23 percent to its revenue last quarter totaling NT$44.69 billion. (US$1.47 billion).
Aside from SSD controllers, demand for flash modules used in medical devices is also on the rise, he said.
Additionally, as companies and schools roll out teleconferencing systems to curb COVID-19 infections, demand for NAND flash controllers and modules for data storage and Internet infrastructure has risen, Pua said.
Phison received new rush orders from equipment vendors to meet teleconferencing demand, he said.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS