DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) expects an uptrend in demand and chip prices to extend into next quarter as telework and remote learning continue to drive purchases of servers and PCs, a company executive said yesterday.
As enterprises and schools sent their employees and students home to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus, people have to use computers to work or to learn remotely and connect to the Internet, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told reporters on the sidelines of an annual general meeting in Taoyuan.
“Originally, people expected the second quarter would be a down [season]. Due to telework and online learning, the second quarter is turning out to be a stronger season,” Lee said.
Photo: Hung Yu-fang, Taipei Times
As the penetration rate of PCs remains relatively low and is unlikely to surge overnight, “I believe the [momentum] will last into the third quarter... There is a chance to see a further price uptick,” he said.
Rising data traffic has further spurred demand for faster Internet connections and driven demand for cloud-related equipment and networking devices, Nanya Technology said.
Nanya Technology’s latest comments echoed Micron Technology Inc’s optimism about next quarter. The US company overnight raised its revenue forecast to between US$5.2 billion and US$5.4 billion, from an earlier estimate of between US$4.6 billion and US$5.2 billion.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic and escalating US-China trade friction are creating greater uncertainty in the second half for the global economy, which has depressed demand for smartphones and consumer electronics, Lee said.
Asked about the US limiting Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) access to chips from non-US suppliers, Lee said that Nanya Technology cannot comment on any single client.
The company would do its best to satisfy customers’ demand, while abiding by the law, he said.
Nanya Technology shareholders yesterday approved a cash dividend distribution of NT$1.5 per common share, representing a yield of 2.46 percent based on the chipmaker’s share price of NT$60.9 in Taipei trading.
The pandemic has not caused a serious delay in equipment delivery and the firm is on track to start initial production using 10-nanometer technology in the second half of this year, Nanya Technology chairman Wu Chia-chau (吳嘉昭) said.
The firm’s second-generation 10-nanometer products would begin pilot production in two years, he said.
The chipmaker this year boosted capital spending to NT$9.2 billion (US$306.21 million) to develop 10-nanometer technology.
Nanya Technology, which holds more than 4,200 patents, has established an 800-engineer research team.
UNCONVINCING: The US Congress questioned whether the company’s Chinese owners pose a national security risk and how the app might influence young users TikTok chief executive officer Shou Chew (周受資), confronted with an unforgiving, distrustful US Congress, tried to give answers in his testimony on Thursday that avoided offending either the US government or China. However, his evasiveness left Congress unsatisfied, with representatives hungrier than ever to punish TikTok for ties to its parent company ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動), based in Beijing. He did not bring his company any closer to a resolution. Politically, TikTok is in a tougher spot. Its executives had been discussing divesting from ByteDance to resolve US national security concerns, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. However, China this week said
The Investment Commission yesterday approved a Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) application to invest an additional US$3.5 billion in its Arizona subsidiary to manufactured advanced chips. The world’s largest contract chipmaker’s board of directors last month approved the funding project after TSMC started moving manufacturing equipment into the fab in December last year in preparation for the production of 4-nanometer chips next year. TSMC said it has also commenced the second phase of facility construction in Arizona. The second fab is to produce semiconductors using 3-nanometer technology in 2026. Altogether, TSMC plans to spend US$40 billion on the Arizona fabs, doubling its
Microsoft Corp has threatened to cut off access to its Internet search data, which it licenses to rival search engines, if they do not stop using it as the basis for their own artificial intelligence (AI) chat products, people familiar with the dispute have said. The software maker licenses the data in its Bing search index — a map of the Internet that can be quickly scanned in real time — to other companies that offer Web search, such as Apollo Global Management Inc’s Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. Last month, Microsoft integrated a cousin of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered chat technology, into Bing. Rivals
KEY SECTOR: Taiwan’s new chip legislation is insufficient, and a more strategic ‘chip act’ that covers the whole semiconductor ecosystem is needed, MediaTek’s chairman said MediaTek Inc (聯發科) chairman Rick Tsai (蔡明介) yesterday urged the government to formulate a state semiconductor strategy and comprehensive “chip act” that includes local chip designers and smaller-scale semiconductor companies, as they are facing intensifying competition from China. The government is playing an increasingly important role in safeguarding the local semiconductor industry’s competitiveness, given that the US, the EU and Japan are offering hefty subsidies and significant tax incentives to build semiconductor capacity domestically, as they have realized the strategic importance of semiconductors, Tsai said. To implement such a program, the government should take steps to finance a “chip act,” Tsai said
RSS