7-23: India is expected to approve an exemption enabling Apple’s first retail stores in the country; Rumored Cyanogen to lay off 20% staff; Innolux working with NEXT for world’s first flexible fingerprint sensor; etc.
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Touch Display |
| Korea Display Industry Association lists the current situation of China’s AMOLED facilities based on Jan 2016. (ET News, press, OLED-Info, TechNews)
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| Combined, this trend has seen mobile demand for OLED hit new highs of 264 million units in 2015, which is expected to increase to 339 million panels this year and up to 602 million in 2019. (Display Daily, article, Android Authority, article, CN Beta)
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| Bernstein has recently put together some interesting forecasts for OLED mobile demand, based on the likelihood of Apple fully or partially adopting OLED displays in the upcoming handsets. If Apple opts for OLED in just part of all of its future smartphones, panel demand from the 2 biggest smartphone manufacturers will pick up dramatically. (Display Daily, article, Android Authority, article, CN Beta)
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| Memory |
| China’s chip-maker JHICC recently broke ground for its DRAM plant with an investment of around KRW6 trillion (USD5.2 billion), aiming to produce 60,000 sheets of 12” (30cm) wafers monthly by 2018. Tsinghua Unigroup and XMC also announced that they would be investing KRW13 trillion and KRW27 trillion each for technological self-sufficiency. (Korea Herald, How Buy, OfWeek, EEPW, Sanwen8) |
| Buoyed by a significant demand increase as Chinese smartphone makers introduce products with larger memory capacity, prices of NAND flash memory chips have rebounded significantly. The benchmark bulk sales price of NAND flash memory products rose a significant 22% in June compared to a month ago. British market research firm Technavio expects the world’s total NAND flash memory shipments to grow 30% in 2016 from a year ago to over 10 billion units. (TechNews, Nikkei)
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| Here is what Deutsche Bank analysts are expecting from the Apple iPhone 7 to be launched in Sept 2016, based on its supply chain checks. A “Plus” model with a dual-camera for better zoom and 3GB of RAM. (9to5Mac, Business Insider, Ubergizmo, IT Home)
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Sensory |
| The worldwide dollar-volume revenues for sensors will rise by a CAGR of 5.3% between 2015 and 2020 compared to an 8.9% annual rate in the last five years, IC Insights indicated. Despite recent years of weak sales growth, just 1% in 2015 to USD6.4 billion, the sensor market is expected to end this decade with 10 consecutive years of record-high revenues and reach USD8.3 billion in 2020. (Digitimes, IC Insights, press, EE Focus)
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Biometrics |
| Innolux has cooperated with Norway-based Next Biometrics Group ASA to develop the world’s first flexible fingerprint sensor based on Next’s active thermal sensing technology. It will start production in 2Q17. Next aims at monthly shipments of 2 million flexible fingerprint sensors in 2017 and 10 million in 2018. (Digitimes, press, Sohu, Tuicool)
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Connectivity |
| Taiwan Mobile has signed a MoU with Nokia Networks for 5G cooperation. The contract covers 5G wireless technology, spectrum use planning, small cells, wireless networking, cloud-based virtualized core networks and IoT technology and applications. (Digitimes, Telecom Paper, China Times)
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Smartphones |
| Apple has reclaimed the top spot in the 2016 edition of the FutureBrand Index, which each year ranks the world’s 100 biggest corporations according to their “perception strength”, based on a survey of 3,000 consumers and professionals across 17 countries. (CN Beta, Apple Insider, Phone Arena, FutureBrand)
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| The cabinet of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to approve an exemption enabling Apple’s first retail stores in the country. It should allow Apple to bypass local sourcing requirements for three years due to it selling “cutting-edge technology”. (Bloomberg, Apple Insider, PC Online) |
| Cyanogen Inc. reportedly have laid off as much as 20% of its staff. The company could be switching its strategy away from OS development to focus on apps. (Android Authority, Ars Technica, Android Central, Re/Code, CN Beta) |
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Tablets |
| Xiaomi is likely to ship only 300,000 notebook computers this year, lower than market estimates of 1 million units, according to the Chinese company’s supply chain sources. (Taipei Times, GSM Arena) |
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Internet of Things |
| Verizon is reportedly discussing a price close to USD5 billion for Yahoo’s core internet business. While the deal does not include the company’s patents at this stage, it does include real estate assets. (CN Beta, Bloomberg, Re/Code, NY Times) |
| China is aiming for a top-10 ranking in automation for its industries by 2020 by putting more robots in its factories, the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) said. By 2020, it aims to boost penetration to 150 per 10,000 workers, citing Wang Ruixiang, President of the China Machinery Industry Federation. To help reach that goal, China aims for sales of 100,000 domestically produced industrial robots a year by 2020。 (Reuters, CN Beta) |
