Since 2012, Taiwan's integrated circuit (IC) industry has experienced positive growth for 11 consecutive years. Since 2014, it has officially surpassed the petroleum, coal products, and chemical raw materials industries to become the leading sector in manufacturing.
China's recent "Detailed Implementation Rules for Subsidies for Automobile Trade-ins" measure has shortened the lifespan of electric vehicles (EVs) eligible for scrapping to 6 years (registered before April 30, 2018), allowing owners to receive a subsidy of CNY7,000 for trading in their old vehicles to purchase new ones.
TSMC's first European wafer fab is set to be located in Dresden, Germany, a region already recognized as a significant chip manufacturing hub in both Germany and Europe. This decision is expected to bring greater international geopolitical attention to the area, placing it at the forefront of the ongoing US-China chip war.
As smartphone camera resolutions continue to improve, lenses inevitably become thicker, impacting the weight of the devices. Market rumors suggest that Apple has been researching metalens technology over the past few years, with plans to initially use it to replace the plastic lenses in the iPad's Face ID system. Metalens technology could debut in the Face ID of the iPhone 16 Pro and flagship models as early as 2024.
Apple's financial report for the third quarter of fiscal year 2024 revealed impressive results for the iPad and Mac series, with the iPad showing particularly strong performance. Supply chain sources indicate that both product lines are expected to maintain steady momentum in the second half of the year. Furthermore, the anticipated launch of a foldable iPad in 2025 is expected to generate significant consumer interest.
Apple's new iPhone is slated to launch in the second half of 2024, sparking intense competition between the two major South Korean panel manufacturers for the iPhone's OLED market. Reports indicate that Samsung Display (SDC) and LG Display (LGD) are aggressively vying for OLED orders in the iPhone 16 series' two high-end models.
Energy saving and carbon reduction are pivotal trends in today's automotive industry, encompassing both four-wheelers and two-wheelers. Ching-Yue Lee, senior project specialist in the Power and System Business Group at Delta Electronics, shared his insights on the impact and development trends of carbon neutrality on electric two-wheelers at the "D Forum 2024" smart vehicle forum hosted by DIGITIMES.
In response to the growing corporate demand for generative AI, Japanese electronics giant Hitachi announced in 2024 that it has signed a three-year partnership contract with Microsoft. This partnership enables users of Hitachi's Lumada platform to leverage Microsoft's services, prominently featuring generative AI. Additionally, it establishes a talent development system poised to potentially create a multibillion-dollar global market.
Even since the US imposed sanctions on China, South Korean manufacturers have been storing old equipment in warehouses, incurring annual rental fees exceeding KRW20 billion (approx. US$14.6 million).
At the closing of the NASDAQ on June 5, Nvidia's stock price surged by 5.16%, reaching a historic high of US$1,224.4, pushing the company's total market cap past the US$3 trillion mark for the first time. This increase also boosted the net worth of CEO Jensen Huang, currently in Taiwan attending Computex 2024, by another US$5 billion, bringing his total net worth to over US$107.4 billion.
Samsung Display (SDC) has unveiled its outlook for the LED on Silicon (LEDoS) technology for Augmented Reality (AR) device displays, expecting that LEDoS technology will evolve from the "Blue + Quantum Dot (QD)" method to the "RGB 3-panel" and "Monolithic 1-panel" methods.
The breakthroughs in Generative AI technology and AI chip computing power have accelerated the development of LLMs and multimodal models, making AI PCs, AI servers, AI chips, and edge AI the center of attention at Computex 2024. However, several top executives at tech companies have recently stated that when it comes to AI commercialization, greater opportunities lie in vertical field applications.
NVIDIA's latest financial report for the first quarter of fiscal year 2025 (February to April 2024) revealed record-breaking revenue for its data center division. Following a record-setting US$18.4 billion revenue in the previous quarter, the data center division in the first quarter of fiscal year 2024 set a new record again with US$22.6 billion in revenue.
Sony's semiconductor business division, primarily focused on CMOS Image Sensors (CIS), plans to reduce its equipment investment amount in the next three fiscal years from 2024 to 2026 (April 2024 to March 2027) by about 30% compared to the previous three-year mid-term plan.
The US recently raised tariffs on seven key industries in China, with EV imports seeing the biggest hike to 100%. Despite this, leading Chinese EV manufacturer BYD held a high-profile event in Mexico to announce its first pickup truck, attracting significant attention due to the timing coincidence.
Barring any unexpected developments, AI PCs are expected to be the central focus of COMPUTEX 2024. It will also set off the first wave of competition in AI end-user products in 2024.
Samsung Electronics recently established the Galaxy Value Innovation team, preparing to venture into the refurbished smartphone market. The hope is to enhance the value of the Galaxy smartphone brand and further boost sales of new devices.
TCL CSOT recently showcased its 7.85-inch tri-fold flexible OLED and other technologies at the Display Week 2024 event organized by the Society of Information Display (SID) in San Jose, California. TCL CSOT exhibited over 40 different panel products, spanning smartphones, tablets, notebooks, automotive displays, TVs, and medical devices. Among these, their printed OLED and flexible OLED technologies received the most attention.
SMIC released its first-quarter financial report for 2024, with revenue performance showing a year-on-year increase of 19.7% to $1.75 billion, slightly better than market expectations and comparable to UMC. It also indicated continuous growth in shipment volume and a capacity utilization rate of 80.8%, higher than 76.8% in the fourth quarter of 2023 and 68.1% in the first quarter of 2023, showcasing a significant improvement.
Since the commercial operation launch of China's 5G communication system in October 2019, the number of 5G mobile users in China has exceeded 800 million. The monthly shipment proportion of 5G smartphones has also increased to over 80%, becoming the mainstream specification in the market.
Boston Dynamics, hailed as the pioneer of humanoid robots, recently announced that Atlas, its most iconic robot, would be retiring after a decade of development. However, shortly after, it announced the launch of an electric version of Atlas.
Market research firm DSCC recently stated that for Apple's OLED iPad launched in 2024, LG Display (LGD) is expected to account for over 65% of the panel shipments, ahead of Samsung Display (SDC). Observers in the South Korean industry have raised concerns about Apple issuing rather harsh requirements, suspecting that Apple may be attempting to shift the "responsibility" of weak sales and shipments onto the South Korean panel manufacturers
Apple has unveiled its new iPad products. Besides OLED panels, the M4 chip featured in the new iPad Pro series was the biggest surprise reveal. In particular, Apple dedicated much of its presentation to introducing the Neural Engine, claiming it to be the best Neural Processing Unit (NPU) among all current AI PC chips.
To take advantage of the rebound in the global monitor market in 2024, companies such as Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are targeting high-performance, gaming, and AI demands by launching new monitor products to accelerate their market penetration.
Market research firm DSCC recently stated that for Apple's OLED iPad launched in 2024, LG Display (LGD) is expected to account for over 65% of the panel shipments, ahead of Samsung Display (SDC). Observers in the South Korean industry have raised concerns about Apple issuing rather harsh requirements, suspecting that Apple may be attempting to shift the "responsibility" of weak sales and shipments onto the South Korean panel manufacturers
Apple has unveiled its new iPad products. Besides OLED panels, the M4 chip featured in the new iPad Pro series was the biggest surprise reveal. In particular, Apple dedicated much of its presentation to introducing the Neural Engine, claiming it to be the best Neural Processing Unit (NPU) among all current AI PC chips.
To take advantage of the rebound in the global monitor market in 2024, companies such as Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are targeting high-performance, gaming, and AI demands by launching new monitor products to accelerate their market penetration.
Following in the footsteps of MediaTek, Pegatron is also starting to use open-source models to build a Traditional Chinese LLM, with partners including Nvidia and other industry representatives. It is reported that the team that developed the Taiwan LLM, which is from the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering (CSIE) at National Taiwan University (NTU), is also a partner.
With sluggish iPhone sales and intense competition from Chinese panel manufacturers, Samsung Display (SDC)'s operating profit in the first quarter of 2024 saw a 56% year-on-year decrease. How SDC will respond to this has received a lot of attention.
In the first quarter of 2024, BYD's net profit was CNY4.57 billion (approx. US$630 million), a year-on-year increase of 10.6%, but a significant decrease of 47.3% compared to the fourth quarter of 2023. This highlighted that profitability was impacted by slowing demand for EVs and intense price competition. Market analysis suggests that while the penetration and sales of EVs are growing, it has come with a decrease in profits.
TSMC's advanced packaging CoWoS capacity continues to have strong demand. Even after doubling its capacity in 2024 and collaborating with OSAT companies, it can still not fully meet customer demands.
Recent market rumors suggest Apple is considering developing robots as its next product line. While there's no further news on what business model Apple might adopt, it seems inevitable that robots will become the next big thing.
After securing a 27-inch OLED display sale to Hyundai Motor Group's Genesis, LG Display (LGD) also reportedly received a large-sized LCD order from a foreign luxury car brand. This LCD order represents the longest size among LGD's automotive displays and is currently in preparation, with a target to officially begin mass production in the first quarter of 2026.
On April 19, SK Hynix announced that it had recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with TSMC. The two companies will collaborate closely on producing next-generation high bandwidth memory (HBM) products and enhancing advanced packaging technologies integrating HBM with logic layers.
On April 19, SK Hynix announced that it had recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with TSMC. The two companies will collaborate closely on producing next-generation high bandwidth memory (HBM) products and enhancing advanced packaging technologies integrating HBM with logic layers.
In the mobile application processor (AP) market, MediaTek secured the top spot in terms of shipment volume, while Apple held on to its spot as the sales leader. In contrast, Samsung Electronics has a market share of only around 5%, and some viewpoints suggest that Samsung System LSI needs to enhance its competitiveness quickly
After fully embracing AI with the recent launch of the Galaxy S24 series flagship smartphones, Samsung Electronics unveiled its new lineup of Neo QLED, OLED, and Lifestyle series displays in Taiwan on April 17, where it also emphasized the advantages of AI in improving display performance and color rendering. By offering a more complete product line, Samsung hopes to take a leading sales position in the high-end display market and maintain double-digit growth for large-size TV sales in Taiwan in 2024.
Apple is set to launch a new generation of the iPad Pro as early as March 2024. The total supply volume of OLED panels is estimated to be 8.5 million units, and it will be fully supplied by South Korea's Samsung Display (SDC) and LG Display (LGD). However, the absence of Chinese manufacturers like BOE has certainly garnered some attention.
Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), the gaming subsidiary under the Sony Group, announced that it will lay off 900 employees, around 8% of SIE's total staff. The main reasons include the PlayStation 5 (PS5)'s weaker-than-expected sales, high development costs, and decreased profitability.
At MWC 2024, major smartphone brands made high-profile showcases of their latest generative AI applications that focused on generating images and videos from text or image inputs. Quick photo editing and image widening functions were also featured. As for text, summarization, translation, and smart voice assistants were also well-represented.
In recent years, major US-based cloud companies have initiated projects to develop chips in-house. Besides outsourcing to external IC design houses, internal demand for semiconductor talent is also increasing. Many related job openings have been posted for their headquarters, in India, and Taiwan. India has become a recruiting hotspot for Microsoft, Google, and Meta.
Recent reports speculated that Apple might introduce its latest budget model, the iPhone SE 4, in 2025. It'll be equipped with the iPhone 14 OLED panel. Because the iPhone 14 OLED is considered a more mature product, Chinese manufacturers like BOE are expected to actively compete with Samsung Display (SDC) for the supply opportunity.
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