Chengdu Silan Semiconductor Manufacturing, a subsidiary of discrete component IDM Silan Microelectronics, has raised CNY500 million (US$71.7 million) from two new Chinese investors to fund its automotive IC packaging business. Government-led Chengdu Investment Fund is among the investors, pouring CNY430 million into Chengdu Silan, according to market sources in China.

IC test and verification labs are gearing up for a ramp-up in 3nm chip output in 2024, according to industry sources.

Leadframe demand for packaging automotive and industrial chips has slightly dropped, and that for consumer electronics ICs continues to be adversely affected by the ongoing inventory adjustments at chipmakers, yet with the prospect that IC packaging leadframe demand may hit the bottom in the first quarter of 2023, according to industry sources.

In 2023, the global LCD market will likely continue to decline due to slow inventory clearance. The market scale will likely return to the pre-pandemic (2019) figures of 129 million units. However, the gaming, portable, and touchscreen display sectors could go against the headwind and see growth, according to Oscar Lin, GM of the monitor business unit at ViewSonic.

The global supply chain makers for electronic shelf labels (ESL) have suffered high inventory levels, however, global demand for ESL has been in a mid- to long-term trend of stable growth mainly because electronic paper is a low power-consuming product in line with efforts to move toward net zero carbon emission and attain ESG (environmental, social, governance) goals.

Germany-based LED maker Ams Osram expects the commercialization of small-size microLED displays to take place within two years.

Texas Instruments (TI), a leader in high-voltage semiconductor solutions, today announced that Chicony Power designed in TI's integrated gallium nitride (GaN) technology to power its latest 65-W laptop power adapter, Le Petit. Leveraging TI's half-bridge GaN FET with integrated gate driver, LMG2610, Chicony Power and TI collaborated on a design to reduce the size of Chicony's power adapter by 50% and increase efficiency up to 94%.

As global demand for XR (extended reality) headsets is expected to take off in 2023, microLED panels tend to surpass LCD and OLED panels to become mainstream, specifically for XR devices, according to South Korea-based Money Today.

Networking device provider Compal Broadband Networks (CBN) has started expanding its ODM business and is actively tapping into the 5G FWA CPE (customer premises equipment) and 10G-PON device markets, according to company president Alex Wang.

Taiwan's major optical lens makers Largan Precision and Genius Electronic Optical (GSEO) are poised to benefit significantly from the upcoming upgrades in handset camera specs, which are expected to bring them lucrative business opportunities in 2023 and beyond, according to industry sources.

The number of mobile broadband services users worldwide has seen a slower increase than that of fixed network users in the past three years because of the stay-at-home economy induced by the COVID-19 pandemic and the trend prompted several 5G telecom operators to commercialize their fixed wireless access (FWA) services to compete for customers with fixed networks, according to DIGITIMES Research's latest study.

At one of the panel talks at the EV Summit held on Dec 12 in Oxford, UK, Anthony Eskinazi, founder and CEO of parking app Justpark, addressed the proliferation of parking and charging apps as EV adoption increases. He pointed out that EV drivers would need to create a dedicated folder in their smartphone and to have at least two to four parking and charging apps, which could create a choice paralysis for EV drivers.