Retail News CRM

Tag: Electronics

  • HSBC lowers Vietnam growth forecast

    HSBC lowers Vietnam growth forecast

    HSBC has lowered its GDP growth forecast for Vietnam from 6.5 percent to 6.2 percent due to inflationary pressures amid rising global energy prices.

    “Vietnam is facing multiple challenges given elevated global energy prices. It will increase its energy bills, deteriorating its terms of trade position,” the bank said.

    The country’s imports of crude oil and petroleum in March were double and four times the 2021 monthly averages, and the rising trend seems set to continue.

    This is likely to shrink Vietnam’s external metrics, making it run a second consecutive current account deficit, and higher oil prices would increase the cost of living, dampening recovery in private consumption, the lender said.

    It raised its inflation forecast for the year to 3.7 percent due to the high energy prices, saying this would increasingly call for the need for monetary normalization. The government targets inflation of not more than 4 percent.

    The bank pointed out that the GDP growth of 5 percent in the first quarter was higher than its forecast of 4.7 percent, indicating the country is firmly back on the recovery track.

    The manufacturing sector remained the key driver of growth in the first quarter, driven by a double-digit increase in electronics production.

    Exports grew by 13 percent year-on-year thanks to increased demand for electronics products though strong figures were reported across sectors like textile, footwear, machinery, and wooden products.

    With Vietnam reopening its borders on March 15, HSBC expects a “small rebound” in tourism this year.

    Authorities are hoping to get 8-9 million foreign tourists this year, 40-50 percent of the 2019 numbers.

    Economic growth of 6.2 percent will however make Vietnam one of the region’s top performers.

    Lees ook:

  • Samsung Electronics CEO accepts unions’ request for talks

    Samsung Electronics CEO accepts unions’ request for talks

    The past few weeks have been a rather turbulent time for Samsung Electronics, and it had nothing to do with the Galaxy S22 series. The company has been heading towards its potential first-ever strike, with a workers’ union coming together to fight against unfairly low wages—but Samsung has already taken the first move towards remedying the situation.

    The workers’ union at Samsung had submitted a demand for wage renegotiations which was to be answered by Friday at the latest, to avoid a full-blown strike. The union was already legally authorized to go on strike, but on Friday, the company committed to an official meeting for wage negotiations to be held in early March.

    The employees involved in the union had been growing increasingly dissatisfied at the company’s refusal to provide significant wage increases or bonuses after the company’s performance in 2021. Although Samsung reportedly fell short of its 2021 production goals, this was owed to the devastation of the pandemic and chip shortages, rather than any drop in employee performance.

    Earlier this month, the union requested that the workers be granted a ten-million-won (roughly $8,400) annual salary increase, as well as performance-based bonuses calculated at 25% of the year’s operating profit.

    The company originally blatantly rejected the demand, but thanks to Samsung’s response on Friday, however, a full strike may be avoided if the two parties come to a mutually satisfactory agreement.

    The organizers of the union stated on Friday that “We received an official reply from the management to our request for a dialogue with the company’s chief executives. We are delighted that the management has changed its stance.”Because of the size of the company, Samsung still hasn’t been decided which CEO will be chosen to participate in the discussion. The upcoming CEO election may complicate the factors around the decision, as the election will take place on March 16, where President Kyung Kye-hyun will be appointed as a new co-CEO.

  • Samsung execs accused of doctoring 5nm chip yield results to hide stolen funds

    Samsung execs accused of doctoring 5nm chip yield results to hide stolen funds

    On the heels of a report claiming that Qualcomm is so upset about the low 35% yield achieved by Samsung Foundry’s 4nm process node that it dumped Sammy for TSMC, another alarming report has surfaced. Samsung is investigating the possibility that fraud occurred inside the company’s foundry business.

    Unnamed Samsung Foundry executives are being accused in the Korean media of fabricating the yield rate data achieved by Samsung Foundry for its 4nm and 5nm process node. This data, expressed as a percentage, shows how many chips in a wafer meet quality testing standards. Yesterday’s report indicated that the yield for Samsung Foundry’s 4nm process node was a poor 35% compared to the 70% yield achieved by rival TSMC.

    The poor yield was mentioned in a report as the reason why Qualcomm supposedly replaced Samsung Foundry with TSMC for the production of next year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Application Processor. The new report claims that the 4nm and 5nm yields were faked by Samsung Foundry executives to make it seem that everything was going well with the division.

    Samsung officials are trying to track down funds that were supposed to be used to improve the yield at Samsung Foundry. Reports of the poor yields and missing funds at Samsung Foundry come at a poor time for Samsung since it and TSMC are the only two foundries in the world able of churning out chips at a process node of under 5nm. Both are working hard to become the first foundry able to ship 3nm components.

    TSMC already has plenty of business as its customer list includes heavyweights such as Apple, MediaTek, Nvidia, and more. TSMC is believed to be running into yield problems of its own at the 3nm process node although volume production is only supposed to be reached later this year.

    The lower the process node, the higher the number of transistors that can fit in a chip. That is key to the performance of the component since the more transistors used, the more powerful and energy-efficient a chip is.

    A Samsung official familiar with the situation said in a quote translated by Machine Learning, “Since the delivered quantities is struggled to meet the recent foundry order volume, we have doubts about the yield of the non-memory process, which has was known to be achieved.”

    The official added, “The management consulting investigates the claims on the yield of a semiconductor foundry by former and current DS division executives. The consulting will determine whether the claims are false.”

    If this story sounds strange and bizarre, that’s because it is. Frankly, we can’t think of a story that is similar to this one. And that means that until more official statements are issued by Samsung or even the police in Korea, we should take this report with a grain of salt.

Samsung’s foundry business set a company record for revenue during the fourth quarter of 2021. On a sequential basis, profits declined from the third quarter of last year as Samsung had to spend more money to ramp up advanced process nodes such as 4nm and 3nm. Whether some of that money has to do with the funds allegedly missing is not clear.

The increase in revenue to a record high in the foundry business came from increased sales to HPC (High Performance Computing) customers. For the current quarter, the first quarter of 2022, Samsung said that its foundry would “focus on improving its advanced process yield to improve its supply stability. Also, the Company will continue technical leadership through mass production of the 1st generation GAA process in the first half of 2022.”

GAA, or Gate All Around, is a transistor structure associated with Samsung’s 3nm process node. It replaces (for Samsung, anyway) the FinFET structure used presently.

Samsung Foundry says that the chip market will remain “tight” as 5G penetrates more market, and demand from High Performance Computing firms remains solid. Additionally, the need for manufacturers to have more chips than needed just in case there is a supply shock from an external event, and outsourcing demand from integrated device manufacturers (ISDMs) who design and build their own chips (like Intel) will keep the assembly lines humming in 2022.

For this year, Samsung expects supply to remain tight due to rising penetration of 5G, solid HPC demand, growing out-sourcing from IDM players and continued needs for securing safety inventory. The Company aims to exceed market growth by expanding capacity at advanced nodes, adjusting prices and adding new customers.

Lees ook:

  • Qualcomm’s new smartwatch chips will reportedly be built using 4nm process node

    Qualcomm’s new smartwatch chips will reportedly be built using 4nm process node

    Qualcomm is looking to take its Snapdragon Wear chipset to a higher level while replacing the current Wear 4100 platform. Built on the 4nm process node, the Snapdragon Wear 5100 and 5100+ are both expected to improve the performance of Google’s wearable operating system thanks to the manufacturing process being used.

    While Samsung Foundry will reportedly build the chips (it should be noted that Samsung manufacturers the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC used on most flagship Android devices), this doesn’t mean that they will be used on any Samsung timepiece. Being built on the 4nm process node, the Snapdragon Wear 5100 and 5100+ should be more energy-efficient than the current 4100 chip which is built on the 12nm process node (and compared to the 28nm process node used on the Snapdragon Wear 3100).

    The difference between the 5100 and the 5100+ is in the packaging with the former separating the SoC and the PMIC (power management integrated circuits). The latter is known as a Molded Embedded Package (MEP) where everything is packaged together. The more powerful of the two chips features an “ultra low power deep sleep mode” that will allow for Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connectivity even when employed.

    The “Plus” chip also will include technology from ARM that supports heart rate and fall detection and will deliver improved haptics. Both variants include four Cortex-A53 cores running at a clock speed of 1.7GHz. In addition, both chips will feature the Adreno 702 GPU running at 700MHz.

    The Snapdragon Wear 5100 and 5100+ will both support up to 4GB of LPDDR4X RAM and eMMC 5.1 storage. This happens to be the same core as the Wear 4100+ although it would seem that Qualcomm is counting on the reduced process node to cover some of the improvements found in the newer chips.

    The ISP will support dual cameras in the 13MP and 16MP range and the thought is that watches will be used for video conference calls in the future. The 5100 line of Snapdragon chips can be used not just to power a Wear OS device, but also can drive an Android device as well.

    The 5100+ will include the QCC5100 co-processor which adds a 22nm Cortex-M55 ultra-low-power processor to help reduce the consumption of battery power. Speaking of which, it seems that the move to use a 4nm process node to build the two variants is a recent change from the 5nm that Samsung was going to use to produce the silicon.

    There is no word when the chips will be available for use on consumer devices. It doesn’t appear that the components will be available to be used on the rumored Google Pixel Watch. The rumor mill has worked overtime to produce renders of what is supposedly the Pixel Watch with a circular watch face. The speculation calls for the timepiece to be unveiled in May, possibly during the Google I/O Developer Conference.

    The device will reportedly be equipped with the capability to allow Google Assistant to process speech on-device. Not only can this speed up the time it takes for the digital helper to respond to queries, it also could allow users to speak to the Assistant even when offline.

    Tipster Max Weinbach disseminated a tweet a few months back that said the Pixel Watch will be powered by a Samsung Exynos chipset similar to the 5nm Exynos W920. The latter is the silicon used with the Galaxy Watch 4 line, but it will carry the Tensor name. That is the name used by Google for the AI-focused SoC that debuted on the Pixel 6 series.

    Google might want to keep the Tensor branding on the chips that power its devices in order to give the public a certain expectation about the AI features that will be available on its products and to present a certain aura of premium quality.

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

  • Samsung invests another $920 mln in northern plant

    Samsung invests another $920 mln in northern plant

    Samsung has received permission to invest an additional $920 million in its electronic components plant in the northern province of Thai Nguyen.

    The license, awarded to the South Korean’s electronics giant’s Samsung Electro-Mechanics unit, will increase its total registered investment in the province by 68 percent to $2.27 billion.

    Samsung, Vietnam’s biggest foreign direct investor, first invested $1.3 billion in the electro-mechanics unit in 2013. The unit produces mainboards and other electronics components.

    As of last year, Samsung had invested $18 billion in Vietnam. It has six plants in the country and is building a new research and development center in Hanoi.

  • Samsung invests another $920 mln in northern plant

    Samsung invests another $920 mln in northern plant

    Samsung has received permission to invest an additional $920 million in its electronic components plant in the northern province of Thai Nguyen.

    The license, awarded to the South Korean’s electronics giant’s Samsung Electro-Mechanics unit, will increase its total registered investment in the province by 68 percent to $2.27 billion.

    Samsung, Vietnam’s biggest foreign direct investor, first invested $1.3 billion in the electro-mechanics unit in 2013. The unit produces main boards and other electronics components.

    As of last year, Samsung had invested $18 billion in Vietnam. It has six plants in the country and is building a new research and development center in Hanoi.

    Lees ook:

  • iPhone doubles Vietnam market share

    iPhone doubles Vietnam market share

    iPhone’s market share in Vietnam increased from 4 percent in 2020 to 9 percent last year, making it the fifth-largest smartphone seller.

    The growth of 119 percent was the highest for any brand, Counterpoint Research said in a report.

    Apple was behind Samsung (34 percent), OPPO (19 percent), Xiaomi (13 percent), and vivo (11 percent).

    Strong growth in Apple products was seen in the last quarter of the year, with sales doubling year-on-year, the report said.

    This was when the company launched iPhone 13.

    Last year, taking advantage of the rising demand, several stores were set up to exclusively sell Apple products like FPT’s F.Studio, TopZone and Lazada Apple Flagship Stores.

    Counterpoint analyst Ivan Lam said: “Apple has always had a place in Vietnamese consumers’ hearts. Last year it expanded its distribution campaign in Vietnam.”

    The overall smartphone market grew by 7 percent last year, the report said.

    Lees ook:

  • Toshiba To Invest $1 Billion To Double Power Chip Production

    Toshiba To Invest $1 Billion To Double Power Chip Production

    Toshiba Corp said on Friday it will invest about 125 billion yen ($1.09 billion) to more than double the production of power management semiconductors, aiming to catch up with power chip giants such as Infineon Technologies AG.

    The Japanese industrial conglomerate will build a cutting-edge 300-millimeter fabrication plant in central Japan for power management chips, which efficiently control electric power in cars, electronic devices, and industrial equipment.

    Toshiba will invest around 100 billion yen in the new plant, on top of a 25 billion yen investment in a 300-millimeter fabrication line it is building at an existing chip plant, a Toshiba spokesperson said.

    The new plant is set to start operating by March 2025. When the first phase is complete, Toshiba’s power chip output capacity would be 2.5 times its current level. Depending on demand, the new plant could further expand with additional investment, the spokesperson said.

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

  • Apple Glasses could also correct your vision, new patent shows

    Apple Glasses could also correct your vision, new patent shows

    There aren’t many new products to gather the attention and hype that the Apple Glasses AR/VR headset has managed to accumulate in the past few months. Apple’s rumored wearable often occupies headlines and leaks about its features are flying left and right.

    The latest Apple Glasses rumored feature could benefit people with prescription glasses. According to a new patent, granted to Apple on Thursday, the new Apple Glasses might feature a system of lenses that adjust to match the user’s prescription.

    The patent in question is titled “Tunable and foveated lens systems,” and describes a clever system of lenses that can be manipulated to act as a regular pair of glasses. The difference is that the system adjusts the position of the lenses automatically, and any person – with or without prescription glasses – could use it without any problems.
    This can be achieved by using a stack of liquid crystal lenses – the liquid material inside can change its optical properties when a current passes through it. Apple says in the patent documents that such a system can also help people with various vision problems, such as presbyopia (inability to focus at a certain distance).

    The clever system manages to circumvent one big obstacle that lies before smart glasses technology – users with regular prescription glasses. Using another pair of smart glasses on top of your prescription glasses is far from comfortable, and manufacturers normally would have to offer different models with different dioptric parameters to suit every consumer out there. Using this futuristic adjustable lens system could not only make smart glasses much more comfortable and approachable but help advance vision-correction technology.

    Bear in mind, though, that Apple (and every other big tech company) files for hundreds of patents every year. Seeing this cool feature on paper doesn’t mean that the actual product will have it onboard. Let’s quickly browse through all Apple Glasses patents that we’ve unearthed so far. One of the latest and most futuristic patents so far was the “Direct retinal projector.” As the name suggests, Apple is looking for ways to project the image directly onto the user’s retina.

    Another cool patent from last year describes Apple Glasses adjusting to ambient lighting, decreasing the ambient light in order to boost the brightness of the projected image.  Much less high-tech was the patent filing describing how Apple Glasses could be used to unlock other gadgets nearby – most wearable devices already have such functionality.

    The rumored self-cleaning feature of the Apple Glasses is far more interesting. The patent involved describes a way to “shake” the device free of dust using vibration.

    Finally, another patent filing showed how Apple Glass might detect sound and direct you to its origin. That might turn out to be a very useful feature for a device you wear on your head and look (kinda) through it.

    • Plastic or metal frames
    • Two 8K resolution displays
    • 120Hz refresh rate
    • Wi-Fi 6E connectivity
    • LiDAR in the frame
    • Gesture and voice controls
    • UI called Starboard
    • Adjustable lenses
    • Price: $499
    • Release date: 2025

    A major Apple Glass leak revealed a $499 price, and also suggested an announcement date sometime in Q3/Q4 2021, which is clearly not happening. According to tech analyst and insider Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple Glasses won’t be ready until 2025.

  • Apple does it again, becomes first publicly traded U.S. firm to be valued at three trillion bucks

    Apple does it again, becomes first publicly traded U.S. firm to be valued at three trillion bucks

    For a short period of time today, Apple’s stock market valuation exceeded three trillion dollars. The tech company and iPhone manufacturer hit that valuation when it topped $182.856 a share on Monday, briefly reaching a new high at $182.88. By closing time, the stock had dropped back to $182.01. Apple’s shares rose $4.44 on the first trading day of the new year.
    Remember the early days of the pandemic when investors dumped big tech names like Apple? Since its pandemic low, Apple’s stock has tripled adding two trillion dollars in market capitalization. Apple’s shares are up 41% since the start of last year making it one of the best performers among the Dow Industrials.
    You might recall the race that Apple had with Amazon more than three years ago to see which firm would be the first U.S. publicly traded firm to reach $1 trillion in value. Apple hit that mark on August 2nd, 2018. After hitting that mark, Apple’s shares declined 30% as it cleared the decks in anticipation for its run to a two trillion dollar valuation which it hit on August 19th, 2020.
    Apple has all engines on “go” right now with the iPhone 13 series continuing to be red hot, and with iPads selling well thanks to the never-ending pandemic. The Apple Watch remains the world’s top-selling timepiece and next year Apple is expected to enter the mixed reality space with a new headset. Interestingly, the company has seen its valuation surge by a factor of nine since the death of co-founder and co-CEO Steve Jobs from pancreatic cancer in 2011.
    Ironically, at the time he passed, Jobs owned just a small amount of Apple shares. His fortune came from an 8 percent stake in Disney that he received from the $7.4 billion acquisition of Pixar by Disney in 2006. Based on the current valuation of Disney, Jobs would be worth $22 billion today which is well behind the $226 billion that Elon Musk is reportedly worth. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is believed to be worth $202 billion (you don’t suppose that Bezos still uses an Amazon Fire Phone, do you?)
    Tech stocks, including Apple, played a big role in the 27% gain earned by the S&P 500 last year. Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Alphabet combined to produce a 31% increase.
    The Journal’s iconic “Heard On The Street” column noted that it has taken nine months for Apple to tack on its latest trillion bucks in valuation even though the prospects for the company haven’t changed during that time period. In fact, the Journal mentions research firm Visible Alpha and its forecast that iPhone unit sales will rise only 1% this year compared with 24% last year.
    This is not a short-term slowdown say analysts surveyed by FactSet. Over the next three years, Apple will grow its top line by only 5% a year putting Apple dead last among other tech giants including Amazon. The latter’s valuation is $1.3 trillion less than Apple’s even though the Echo manufacturer garnered 25% more revenue than Apple last year
    Amazon is also expected to see its revenue grow 16% a year over the next three years compared to the aforementioned 5% for Apple. Apple’s products and services are doing quite well but the iPhone still makes up half of its revenue and has benefited from deals offered by the carriers looking to get more 5G phones into customers’ hands.
    Apple certainly enjoyed a bountiful fiscal 2021 with revenue up 33% to $365.8 billion, meaning that the company took in one billion clams each and every day. That was a company record, by the way, and operating income soared 64% to $108.9 billion. This was the first time Apple produced a double-digit growth rate in three years.
    Once Apple’s shares stabilize over three trillion dollars, it will be time to watch out for the rise to four trillion. However, one day the growth just won’t be there and then it truly will be the time to see what Apple has under its sleeves as the next big thing.
    Lees ook:

  • Samsung has invested nearly $18 bln in Vietnam

    Samsung has invested nearly $18 bln in Vietnam

    Samsung has invested $17.74 billion in Vietnam in the last 24 years, 29 percent of it in the last five.

    With eight manufacturing and research facilities in the country, the South Korean electronics giant achieved revenues of nearly $60.5 billion in the first 10 months of this year, Samsung Vietnam CEO Choi Joo Ho told Deputy Prime Minister Le Minh Khai at a meeting in Hanoi Monday.

    It marked a 15 percent year-on-year rise despite the challenges to keeping factories going and sourcing parts amid Covid-19, he said.

    Exports accounted for nearly 89 percent of the revenues, he added.

    The company is building a $220-million research and development center in Hanoi, the first of its kind outside of its home country.

    Lees ook:

  • Qualcomm’s Apple M1-rivalling silicon arriving in 2023

    Qualcomm’s Apple M1-rivalling silicon arriving in 2023

    Qualcomm revealed plans to bring to the market an Apple M1-beating chip by 2023 during its 2021 investor conference.

    The processor will be based on technology from Nuvia, a chip startup that was founded by ex-Apple engineers who had worked on Apple A and M series chips and was bought by Qualcomm earlier this year. We can hope to see Nuvia’s tech in smartphone chips too at some point in the future.

    For now, the focus is on the next generation of Arm-based processors which Qualcomm claims will set a new performance benchmark for Windows PCs. The chip will offer industry-leading sustained performance and battery life, or so Qualcomm hopes. It will feature Arm-based CPU cores, Adreno graphics, 5G modem, Hexagon DSPs, and Spectra imaging core.

    If you look at what Apple has done with the M-series, on the upper hand it even has the performance of an [Nvidia] RTX 3080 at discrete graphics.” – Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon.

    Qualcomm will also work on improving its Adreno GPUs to offer a desktop-like gaming experience on PCs. The chip giant is aiming to have samples out for customers in around nine months, with the official launch planned for 2023.

    Whether the chip will be able to live up to the claims or see the same fate as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx and Microsoft Surface SQ2 PC chips that failed to make a mark remains to be seen.

    Apple meanwhile has already launched even more powerful versions of the M1 chip, the M1 Pro and M1 Max, and is now reportedly working on the third-generation of Mac chips that will likely offer significantly better CPU performance than the latest chips. The M series chip power a slate of new Apple products, including some of the best tablets that money can buy.

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

  • Razer opens retail store and cafe inside its new Southeast Asia HQ

    Razer opens retail store and cafe inside its new Southeast Asia HQ

    Global lifestyle brand for gamers, Razer, has launched its Southeast Asia headquarters in Singapore: home to the country’s first Razer retail store and café.  The building façade features the brand’s signature black and striking neon green, while the store offers the brand’s full range of products, allowing gaming fans to sample and experience Razer’s latest innovations and creations.

    Meanwhile, the new technology-focused F&B concept serves beverages made by a state-of-the-art robotic barista arm. At the RazerCafe, guests can order a beverage at the store or pre-order a cup of coffee via the RazerCafe App and collect it in-store.

    “Our gamer-centric ecosystem has redefined the gaming experience for more than a decade with the introduction of innovative solutions and whole new product categories, and we’re not planning on slowing down,” said Min-Liang Tan, co-founder and CEO of Razer.

    “The new regional hub represents everything that Razer stands for, from innovation, to design, to sustainability, and will not only be home to Razer’s growing staff, but to up-and-coming entrepreneurs, and even gamers looking for a place to train and learn as well.”

    As part of the expansion, the company has increased its staff number in Singapore from 600 to 1000.

    Lees ook:

  • Samsung reports record third quarter revenue despite global chip shortage

    Samsung reports record third quarter revenue despite global chip shortage

    Samsung had a record third-quarter revenue as it reported the U.S. Dollar equivalent of $63.1 billion for the period. That works out to a 10% increase for the top line while operating profit for the quarter came to $13.5 billion (or 26% higher than the operating profit reported during the previous quarter). $22.6 billion in revenue during the quarter came from Sammy’s semiconductor business.

    Samsung was able to navigate its chip business through the global chip shortage “by flexibly operating its product mix.” Samsung’s mobile business also played a huge role in the company’s record-breaking third-quarter. Thanks to strong sales of its flagship phones including foldable like the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and the Galaxy Z Flip 3, Samsung generated $24.2 billion in revenue during the period from July through September.

    Demand for semiconductors improved thanks to strong sales of computers; the latter benefited from the increased number of people working at home because of the pandemic.

    The company’s profits were impacted by the larger marketing outlays it made for its foldable line. Strong demand for Samsung’s phones also led its display business to deliver $7.5 billion in revenue. Earnings for the display segment were helped by strong demand for small to medium OLED panels. Demand for larger-sized displays was sluggish.

    Samsung is optimistic about Q4 and 2022 results, but cannot estimate results for the chip business because of the supply issues in that market. For the fourth quarter, the company expects to report higher earnings “due to expanded supply of SoCs and related products for launches of new 5G smartphones in 2022.”

    The company expects that the Galaxy S22 series will be its first flagship series of the new year with the Galaxy S22, Galaxy S22+, and the Galaxy S22 Ultra kicking off 2022 in January. Meanwhile, investors were happy with the report as the shares soared 2.28% on Wednesday (or $1.45 USD) to $61.22.

    Lees ook:

  • Chip shortage forces Apple to cut production of the 5G iPhone 13 series in 2021

    Chip shortage forces Apple to cut production of the 5G iPhone 13 series in 2021

    The chip shortage is now having an impact on Apple’s iPhone 13 series. Those knowledgeable about what is going on inside Apple’s camp say that the company will cut its production targets for this year by as many as 10 million units reducing the number of handsets made this year to 80 million from the original target of 90 million. Both Broadcom and Texas Instruments are the chipmakers who aren’t able to deliver the number of components they promised to Apple according to anonymous sources.

    Texas Instruments supplies Apple with chips for its displays and one chip that has become hard to find powers the OLED panels on iPhone models. Broadcom produces wireless components for the iPhone. Lead times in the chip industry, which measures how long it takes a manufacturer ordering chips to receive them, is at a record-setting 21.7 weeks compared to nearly 12 weeks at the same time last year.

    Broadcom is fabless which means that it relies on independent foundries like TSMC to manufacture its semiconductors. While Texas Instruments does make some chips itself, it also relies on TSMC to produce some of its chip designs. This means that both must scramble to get their semiconductors made by TSMC and since Apple is the end-user of these components, Apple is the company that is getting the brunt of the shortage.

    Apple already has been able to sidestep price hikes of as high as 20% instituted by TSMC. As the latter’s largest customer, Apple was able to get away with only a 3% price increase while also avoiding getting hit by the shortage. But even Apple now can’t escape what is happening around the world.

    Once again, what brought on the shortage were car manufacturers who early last year figured that their new car business was dead meat in the wake of the pandemic. So they cut back on ordering chips and when demand for new cars turned out to be much better than expected, automakers backed up their trucks to take as many chips as they could buy. This shortage could continue next year and might not run its course for some time.

    New orders for the iPhone 13 series made through Apple’s website will not be delivered until November in some cases and if you want to pick up your new handset at an Apple Store, you’re out of luck. The phones are “currently unavailable” for Apple Store pick up. And today’s report says that Apple’s carrier partners are also seeing delays in receiving new iPhone shipments.

    What is at stake here is Apple’s fiscal first-quarter of 2022, which is known as the holiday quarter since it includes Chanukah and Christmas. The company is expected to take in $120 billion in revenue during this year’s holiday quarter, up 7% from last year’s fiscal first-quarter revenue. Interestingly, a decade ago the $120 billion would be more than a complete year’s worth of revenue for Apple.

    Both the U.S. and China would love to become self-sufficient when it comes to semiconductors. The U.S. has made this rather tough for China by not allowing a Dutch company named ASML from shipping a $150 million machine called extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine to China’s top foundry, SMIC. The EUV machine is used to print circuit designs on wafers that are eventually cut into individual chips.

    With billions of transistors used on semiconductors like the A15 Bionic (which has 15 billion transistors stuffed inside it), etching circuit patterns require a machine that can etch an extremely thin line on the wafer and that is what the EUV machine does. ASML is working on its next-generation EUV that it says will allow foundries to build more powerful and energy-efficient chips over the next decade.

    Lees ook: