According to a Wall Street Journal report on July 14, China's Tsinghua Unigroup is planning to spend US$23 billion (or US$21 per share) to acquire US-based Micron Technology. The amount is higher than the China government's China National Semiconductor Industry Investment Fund's scale of CNY120 billion (US$19.32 billion)...
According to Digitimes Research's findings, Qualcomm's development in the high-end market is not stable in 2015 and facing MediaTek and Spreadtrum's fierce competition in the mid-range and entry-level segments, the chip supplier's shipment performance in China has been weakening, causing some of its application processors (APs) to see inventory buildup.
With China handset brand vendors starting to launch flagship products with fingerprint sensors in the second half of 2014, touch controller IC players who have seen thinning profitability have been aggressively developing fingerprint sensor solutions.
The output value of China's IC foundry industry is forecast to register a 10.5% increase in 2015 reaching US$3.9 billion, according to Digitimes Research.
Observing the Intel mobile platform's development in the non-Android tablet market, Digitimes Research expects Windows tablets to replace Android tablets and become Intel's new focus. Intel's Education Tablet, which achieved success in the education sector in 2014, is also expected to benefit the CPU giant's mobile processor shipments in 2015.
While visiting Southern China's white-box tablet supply chain, Digitimes Research discovered that shipments of white-box tablets with phone functionality saw their first on-year drop in the second quarter. This is because their major markets have experienced weak economy and competition is also growing from China-based smartphone brand vendors who have been expanding in overseas markets.
In an effort to secure flexible display orders from China-based wearables vendors, China's panel makers are increasing investments in AMOLED and PMOLED technologies, with aim of increasing production and securing more market share in early 2017, according to Digitimes Research.
China's smartphone industry in the second quarter did not see growth as strong as Digitimes Research had anticipated previously and it grew only slightly more than 15% sequentially and by a single-digit percentage on year.
Japan's home entertainment segment saw several developments in the second quarter of 2015. Sharp introduced a mix of new Ultra HD (4K) TVs, including Aquos 4K Next that can upscale to 8K resolution, according to Digitimes Research.
Despite Taiwan makers lagging behind Korea and Japan in TFT LCD and AMOLED panel technologies, the makers have advantages for producing PMOLED and EPD products used in wearable devices.
