Amid strong sales in the smartphone market, mini molding chokes have become the hottest area in the passive components industry since last year. Mini molding chokes are small, have low DC resistance, and are capable of withstanding large currents, resulting in their broad use in midrange to high-end smartphones that emphasize product performance, thereby continually driving related demand.
Samsung Electronics and Lenovo, both of which have ambitious goals for tablet shipments for 2014, both released new tablets in May 2014. Pricing of the new tablet from Samsung is still far higher than those of its competitors and is expected to impact the Korea-based vendor's shipment performance.
Japan- and Korea-based operators have been aggressively promoting their LTE services. Their counterparts In Latin America and Europed have also been accelerating the process towards commercialization for LTE. The number of LTE users worldwide surpassed 200 million in 2013, up 130 million from 2012...
With interesting designs, superior pricing and an innovative marketing strategy, China-based smartphone vendor Xiaomi was able to become the top local brand in China in the first quarter of 2014, according to the recently published Digitimes Research China Smartphone Market and Industry Tracker report.
With the China smartphone market maturing, application processor (AP) providers are facing new challenges to increase their market share. According to the latest Digitimes Research China Smartphone AP Tracker report, beginning in the the fourth quarter of 2012, annual growth and quarterly growth for smartphone AP shipments both rapidly slowed.
Despite the impact of seasonality and inventory adjustments at PC and consumer electronics product clients, the top-three Taiwan-based wafer foundry houses still managed to ramp up their combined revenues by 0.4% on year to US$6.15 billion in the first quarter of 2014, buoyed by replenishment orders for smartphone solutions from Qualcomm, Broadcom and MediaTek, according to Digitimes Research.
April average retail price for 7W LED light bulbs (equivalent to 40W incandescent ones) in the China market rose by 5.9% on month to CNY35.9 (US$5.7), while 9W (equivalent to 60W incandescent) models saw an 1.4%, according to Digitimes Research.
Intel is set to ship 40 million application processors (APs) for tablets in 2014, up 400% from the volume in 2013, though most market watchers believe the goal is rather difficult to achieve...
Samsung Display is expected to make nearly US$5 billion in capital expenditures for developing AMOLED panel technology, according to Digitimes Research.
