Globalfoundries has denied recent rumors indicating the company is looking for a strategic partner or buyer to transfer the ownership of its 12-inch wafer plant in Chengdu, China.

Taiwan-based pure-play foundry UMC plans to invest a total of US$1.25 billion in its China-based plants where production capacity will be expanded to meet local demand, said company co-president SC Chien at a recent event in Shanghai.

Taiwan-based backend houses are expected to significantly benefit from increasingly brisk market demand for MEMS sensors for use in smartphones and other consumer electronics devices, as the world's leading vendors including Germany-based Bosch Group will move to tap a wider variety of applications...

Taiwan recorded manufacturing production index (2016 as base year) of 103.52 for April 2018, decreasing 11.15% sequentially but increasing 9.07% on year, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA).

China's IC industry output value grew 20.8% from a year earlier to CNY115.29 billion (US$18.1 billion) in the first quarter of 2018, according to statistics released by the China Semiconductor Industry Association (CSIA).

Silicon wafer prices are estimated to further rise 20% on average in 2018 after posting the same size of hike in 2017 on robust market demand, and the quotes are expected to trend upward through 2020, weakening the profitability of foundry houses while significantly driving up revenues and profits...

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted US$2.69 billion in billings worldwide in April 2018 (three-month average basis), according to SEMI. The billings figure is 10.7% higher than the revised March level of US$2.43 billion and 26% above the April 2017 billings level of...

Samsung Electronics has disclosed its comprehensive process technology roadmap updates down to 3nm at the annual Samsung Foundry Forum in the US.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) and Huali Microelectronics, and memory foundry specialist Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) are all gearing up for transition to sub-10nm process technology with respective deployments kicking off this year.

Pure-play foundries in China and Taiwan intend to encourage their fabless firms to transition to 12-inch wafer manufacturing as their 8-inch fab capacity has been extremely tight, according to industry sources.

Backend houses Formosa Advanced Technologies (FATC) and Walton Advanced Engineering have seen stable orders for DRAM memory, according to industry sources.

IC Insights has revised upward its semiconductor industry capex growth forecast for 2018 to 14% from 8%. The industry capital spending is also forecast to exceed US$100 billion for the first time in 2018, according to the research firm.

Foundry houses raising quotes for 8-inch capacity amid tight supply are creating pressure on IC designers' profit margins in the short term, but in the long run could be a stabilizing factor in terms of profitability deterring downstream clients from asking for unreasonable price reductions, according...

Taiwan received export orders totaling US$39.11 billion in April 2018, decreasing 7.7% sequentially but increasing 9.8% on year, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA).

Lagging behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in the development of fan-out wafer level packaging (FOWLP) technology, Taiwan's main OSAT (outsourced semiconductor assembly and test) firms such as Powertech Technology and Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) are aggressively developing...

Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) chairman Terry Gou has reiterated a plan to have his company enter the field of chip manufacturing, according to a Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) report.

Infineon Technologies has announced a plan to build a new factory for power semiconductors - a fully automated chip factory for manufacturing 300mm thin wafers.

Powertech Technology (PTI) with its fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) technology has obtained orders for power management ICs from MediaTek, according to industry sources.

After acquiring Silego Technology, a US supplier of configurable mixed-signal ICs (CMIC), for US$306 million in late 2017, UK-based Dialog Semiconductor has launched new series of GreenPAK CMIC devices, providing engineers with a brand-new set of total IC design solutions.

China IT conglomerate Tsinghua Unigroup has kicked off a spate of investment projects designed to step up the development of its cloud business and turn itself into the country's strongest public cloud service provider, according to group chairman Zhao Weiguo.

The world's top-15 semiconductor companies' sales surged by 26% in the first quarter of 2018 compared to a year ago, six points higher than the total worldwide semiconductor industry increase of 20%, according to IC Insights. Of the top-15 semiconductor companies, 13 enjoyed double-digit sales growth...

Most Korea-based LCD equipment makers saw their revenues hit high in 2017, driven by expansion projects initiated by Samsung Display and LG Display to ramp up their OLED panel production capacities, as well as by record-high export shipments, mainly to China, according to Digitimes Research.

Backend house Orient Semiconductor Electronics' (OSE) board of directors has approved a plan to reduce paid-in capital by NT$2.536 billion (US$84.75 million), or 31.47%, to NT$5.523 billion.

Backend house ChipMOS Technologies has signed a five-year syndicated loan for NT$12 billion (US$401.4 million) with 11 local banks in Taiwan, according to a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE).

Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments climbed to a record-high 3.084 billion square inches in the first quarter of 2018, according to SEMI. The shipments represented increases of 7.9% on year and 3.6% sequentially.