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Commentary / Analysis

• Tablet Shipments Slow Down Dramatically (Monday Feb. 02, 2015)
  According to preliminary data, total Tablet shipments reached 78.3 million units in Q4 2014, up 1 percent from 77.2 million in Q4 2013. Apple further consolidated its global market share, due to anticipated seasonal shipments reaching a 27% share of the Tablet market.
  
  
• Smartphone Apps Processor Revenue Jumped 16 Percent in Q3 2014 (Friday Jan. 30, 2015)
  
  
  
• Rambus' ReRAM Has Many Customers (Friday Jan. 30, 2015)
  Intellectual property licensor Rambus Inc. has been working quietly for three years on metal-oxide based resistive RAM technology and has signed up "a lot of customers" for technology, according to CEO Ron Black. It is now looking likely that a number of players could come to contest the NAND flash replacement with various ReRAM approaches in 2016.
  
  
• Chinese Walls and Back Doors (Friday Jan. 30, 2015)
  Qualcomm and U.S. industry are the losers as China's antitrust regulators help build a new wall around China's semiconductor industry.
  
  
• UMC Boosts Capex to Capture More 28nm Orders (Thursday Jan. 29, 2015)
  UMC, the world’s third-largest chip foundry, said today it will increase its capital expenditure budget for 2015 by almost a third as it aims to grab more orders in the 28 nanometer node.
  
  
• Wi-Fi Alliance Radiates Outward (Thursday Jan. 29, 2015)
  The Wi-Fi Alliance, which has certified Wi-Fi devices since 1999, faces increasing challenges to meet requirements to raise performance and lower power for a widening variety of uses including the emerging Internet of Things.
  
  
• Are TSMC, UMC Affected By Taiwan’s Water Shortages? (Wednesday Jan. 28, 2015)
  Taiwan’s leading chip foundries, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC), are unaffected so far by water shortages in Taiwan, thanks to the companies’ efforts in recent years to institute resource-reuse programs.
  
  
• Memory Suppliers Account For More Than 60% of 300mm Wafer Capacity (Tuesday Jan. 27, 2015)
  A ranking of the industry’s largest IC manufacturers in terms of installed 300mm wafer start capacity in 2014 is provided in Figure 1. Included in the list are four companies from North America, four from Taiwan, two companies from South Korea, two from Taiwan, and one from Japan (two companies tied for the #10 position).
  
  
• Samsung reportedly nabs 75% of Apple's next-gen 'A9' SoC orders (Monday Jan. 26, 2015)
  Samsung has won a huge percentage of orders for the production of Apple's next-generation "A9" system-on-a-chip, variations of which are expected to power this year's iOS device lineup, according to a new report.
  
  
• Imagination Sees Life Beyond Games (Monday Jan. 26, 2015)
  Imagination Technologies continues to diversify its bets beyond mobile games running on its graphics cores. The company showed a broad set of demos featuring its PowerVR GPU and other cores at the International CES.
  
  
• Why Did Google Shut Glass Beta Project? (Monday Jan. 26, 2015)
  Google Glass is the supposedly sleek, stylish eyewear with the head-up display built-in. And it is going to become a collector's item because the beta-test project that allowed consumers and developers to purchase them has closed.
  
  
• Samsung and Apple Continue to Lead as Top Global Semiconductor Customers in 2014, According to Gartner (Wednesday Jan. 21, 2015)
  Samsung Electronics and Apple remained the top semiconductor buyers in 2014, representing with a combined semiconductor demand of 17 percent, according to Gartner, Inc. Samsung Electronics and Apple together consumed $57.9 billion of semiconductors in 2014, an increase of $3.9 billion from 2013.
  
  
• IC Market CAGR Rebounds But Growth Remains Below 30-Year Average (Wednesday Jan. 21, 2015)
  Strong mobile market, IoT not enough to spur stronger IC growth increases.
  
  
• IoT Attracts a Smart Skeptic (Monday Jan. 19, 2015)
  As a McKinsey analyst, Christopher Thomas is paid to think out of the box. So in this time that is by all accounts the peak of the hype cycle for the Internet of Things, it's no surprise the co-leader of the firm's Asia semiconductor practice is something of an IoT skeptic.
  
  
• China's Shifting Sands Spell Trouble for Qualcomm, Broadcom (Monday Jan. 19, 2015)
  Shifting sands in China’s mobile market are likely to affect the leaders in the U.S. chip industry -- such as Qualcomm and Broadcom – much faster than previously expected, according to several sources who attended the International Consumer Electronics Show last week.
  
  
• Analysts Turn Negative on Outlook for TSMC (Monday Jan. 19, 2015)
  Analysts switched to a more negative outlook for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) after the world’s largest contract chipmaker announced a record quarterly profit for the end of 2014 that may mark the start of a downturn for the company during 2015.
  
  
• EDA Consortium Reports Revenue Increase for Q3 2014 (Friday Jan. 16, 2015)
  The (EDAC) Market Statistics Service (MSS) today announced that the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry revenue increased 5.7 percent for Q3 2014 to $1828.1 million, compared to $1729.3 million in Q3 2013. Sequential EDA revenue for Q3 2014 increased 4.0 percent compared to Q2 2014, while the four-quarters moving average, which compares the most recent four quarters to the prior four quarters, increased by 5.6 percent. 
  
  
• FeFET to Extend Moore's Law (Friday Jan. 16, 2015)
  Universal memory replacing DRAM, SRAM, flash and nearly every transistor in a computer may result from their successful fabrication of a ferroelectric gate over germanium channel material, according to researchers at the University of Texas (Austin). Their successful ferroelectric gate stack holds the hope of extending Moore's Law beyond the end of the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) circa 2028.
  
  
• Apple Watch Spurs Rapid Growth of Market for Wireless Charging in Wearable Technology in 2015 (Friday Jan. 16, 2015)
  Propelled by the arrival of the Apple Watch, the global market for wireless power and charging in wearable applications is set to attain a gargantuan 3,000 percent expansion this year compared to 2014, according to IHS Technology (NYSE: IHS).
  
  
• TSMC's 20nm, 28nm Technology Accounts for 50% of Sales (Friday Jan. 16, 2015)
  Foundry giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSMC) Thursday (Jan. 15) reported an increase in revenue in profit for the fourth quarter of 2014 and said demand for its most advanced process technologies continued to increase, accounting for more than half of sales.
  
  
• China to Write $10B Check for Chips (Thursday Jan. 15, 2015)
  China is expected to invest this year half the $20 billion fund it set aside to grow its semiconductor industry. As much as 70% of it is expected to target its domestic wafer fabs.
  
  
• Allwinner Accused of Breaking Linux License Rules (Wednesday Jan. 14, 2015)
  Fabless processor company Allwinner Technology Co. Ltd. (Zhuhai, China) has been accused of violating the GNU General Public License (GPL) under which Linux is distributed.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Sales Expected to Reach $358 Billion in 2015, a 5.4 Percent Increase From 2014 (Wednesday Jan. 14, 2015)
  Worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to reach $358 billion in 2015, a 5.4 percent increase from 2014, but down from the previous quarter's forecast of 5.8 percent growth, according to Gartner, Inc. The market is being driven by strong growth in application-specific standard products (ASSPs) in smartphones, along with DRAM and NAND flash in ultramobiles and solid-state drives (SSDs).
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Capital Spending to Increase 0.8 Percent in 2015 (Tuesday Jan. 13, 2015)
  Despite strong growth of 12.9 percent in 2014, worldwide semiconductor capital spending is projected to only grow 0.8 percent in 2015, to $65.7 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. Capital equipment spending will increase 5.6 percent in 2015, down from 11.3 percent in the third quarter 2014 forecast, as the largest spenders adopt conservative investment strategies.
  
  
• DRAM Capacity Rises from Slump; Sector Faces New Challenges (Tuesday Jan. 13, 2015)
  Based on SEMI World Fab Forecast data, SEMI forecasts a favorable outlook for DRAM as bit demand rises, improving selling prices in 2013 and 2014. The DRAM sector experienced a sharp decline during the 2008/2009 financial crisis and subsequently contracted, both in the number of suppliers and in installed fab production capacity.
  
  
• Silicon Image explores sale (Monday Jan. 12, 2015)
  Semiconductor company Silicon Image Inc, whose technology helps streams video between consumer electronic devices, is exploring strategic alternatives, including selling itself, according to people familiar with the matter.
  
  
• Broadcom CEO: Life After LTE, 5G Cellular Exit (Monday Jan. 12, 2015)
  If you had to guess one product category conspicuously absent from Broadcom's CES booth this year, would you name smartphones? If you did, you were right.
  
  
• IoT Needs More Than Moore (Monday Jan. 12, 2015)
  The Internet of Things requires specialty processes, pioneered by smartphone chips, to create optimal IoT silicon, says a TSMC executive.
  
  
• CES Reveals IoT Not Ready for 'iPhone Moment' (Friday Jan. 09, 2015)
  The International CES exposed how far its aspirational promoters still are from the reality of the “Internet of Things” (IoT). As one executive in the electronics industry, who asked for anonymity, put it, “We don’t have the iPhone moment yet for IoT.”
  
  
• IoT Feels Unintended Consequences (Friday Jan. 09, 2015)
  The Internet of Things will require more horsepower in datacenter servers and flexibility at end nodes for security -- issues that play well to FPGAs.