In last 3 decades of semiconductor market, the largest growth in IC sales was at 33% in 2010. At that time global recession had started due to financial crisis and in 2009 oil prices fell more than 30%. It appeared that oil prices were negatively correlated with semiconductor market growth. Today again there is another sharp decline… Read More
Tag: china
Smart Phones and the Chinese Marketplace
My first mobile phone was from Motorola and it was fondly called the “brick phone” because of its crude shape. That phone helped me be more efficient while living and working in Silicon Valley, because long commute times in the car were common. At one time Motorola was the best-selling mobile phone brand in the world,… Read More
Intel – "Inside" good markets, outside bad- Huge potential in Memory & Photonics
Intel’s lack of exposure to handsets/China is now a positive rather than a negative
Intel’s strength in “cloud” & servers avoids much consumer weakness in China & developing Markets
Crosspoint has huge upside- Coupled with Photonics it fortifies Intel server dominance
The shoe is on the other… Read More
China (and Cupertino) Are Killing Korea in Mobile
Samsung, #1 in the mobile phones based on unit shipments, has two big problems in mobile. Apple’s iPhone; and China in general and Huawei in particular in the Android world where they live. They have just announced their fifth quarter of decline. Revenue was down 8% year on year but operating profit declined 38%. They sold … Read More
SEMICON Day 1: IoT Everywhere…and China
The first day of SEMICON West for me is usually imec day. They have a full day of presentations. But I saw the most interesting ones in Brussels recently so I decided to go to the SEMI/Gartner day instead. They run in parallel ballrooms in the Marriot on 4th street.
To me there were two big themes. One was the unavoidable internet of things… Read More
SITRI and Coventor Partner to Scale Up MEMS in China
When it comes to wearable technology and the rapidly emerging world of IoT, sensors and MEMS are on the frontlines. They collect and transfer raw data such as pressure, temperature and motion and process it with algorithms critical to making sure the right information gets to humans and/or machines so the right reaction is enabled.… Read More
Semiconductor in China: Is 3rd Time a Charm?
China has recently announced extremely ambitious plans for becoming more self-sufficient in semiconductors. Today China is about 1/3 of the worldwide IC market but about 90% of that is imported. Think of something like the iPhone assembled in Shenzen with chips from TSMC, Samsung, Hynix, Toshiba/Sandisk , Micron and more (Taiwan,… Read More
Lights, audio, and waiting for action from Qualcomm
The news Qualcomm has shipped over a billion Snapdragon chips in Android smartphones broke last September. After reiterating that and a sustained outlook for smartphones over the next five years, the Qualcomm CES 2015 presser seemed to leave most media outlets a bit disappointed. Naturally, that prompts us to ask what is going… Read More
Who will be “lucky dog” in 4G LTE basebands?
The official term is “beneficiary rule”, but among colorful racing broadcasters, drivers, and fans it is more commonly referred to as the “lucky dog”: the driver who is down a lap, but gets to advance to the lead lap by virtue of being farthest ahead when a caution flag is raised.
Qualcomm has lapped the entire field when it comes to … Read More
Mobile: China Rising
The mobile numbers for Q1 are now published. At #1 as always is Samsung, who shipped 86M phones for 30% market share. At #2, with almost half as much volume, is Apple who shipped 44M phones. Round here in silicon valley pretty much everyone has either a Samsung Galaxy or an iPhone so you don’t get any sense of who the other major … Read More