03-13: OPPO will replace broadcasting giants Star India as the official sponsor of the Indian cricket team; Intel is paying USD15.3B to acquire Mobileye; etc.
Chipsets
Xiaomi’s Pinecone just released its first SoC Surge S1, now it is reportedly working with TSMC to produce its next-gen octa-core, 5-mode “Surge S2” using 16nm process. Currently it is already in sampling phase, and expects to enter mass production in 3Q17. Surge S2 will be used in Xiaomi smartphone in 4Q17. (EEPW, Tencent, IT Home)
Intel is paying USD15.3B to acquire Mobileye, a computer vision firm develops the visual smarts behind cars’ driving assistance systems and includes adaptive cruise control, lane departure warnings, and distance keeping. (VentureBeat, Reuters, Bloomberg, Sohu, Kejixun)
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has landed orders for high performance computing (HPC) chips for AI applications from Nvidia and Qualcomm. TSMC will fabricate Nvidia’s next generation Volta GPU using a 12nm process. TSMC also landed earlier orders for the Centriq 2400 server chips from Qualcomm. (Digitimes, press, HQEW)
Touch Display
Touch sensor maker HannsTouch Solution, due to growing demand for touch sensors used in AMOLED panels, will invest NTD1.8B (USD58.3M) to expand production capacity from 36,000 substrates a month to 48,000 units in 3Q17, with operation of the additional capacity to begin in the following quarter. (Digitimes, press, UDN)
Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC) expects mobile AMOLED demand to grow from almost 400M panels in 2016 to almost 1.2B in 2021. Samsung Display had a 97% share of shipments in 2016, is expected to have a 96% share in 2017 and fall to a still dominant 63% share in 2021. The second largest will by LG Display with a market share of 10% followed by BOE (9%) and Tianma (5%). (OLED-Info, Display Supply Chain, blog)
BOE, CSOT, Tianma, EverDisplay, Kunshan Govisionox and Royole will all develop their AMOLED facilities. The 8 factories will have combined monthly production capacity of 335K glass substrates, equivalent to annual capacity of 4.02M glass substrates, Photonics Industry & Technology Development Association (PIDA) noted. (Digitimes, press)
Camera
HMD Global indicates that the claim “HMD will not use Carl-Zeiss optics on Nokia Android phones” was meant for only officially announced Phones Nokia 3, Nokia 5 and Nokia 6. So, that leaves option of Carl-Zeiss open on future Nokia Android Flagships. (Nokia Poweruser, WCCFTech, Ubergizmo, Hexun, 91.com, 163)
Memory
TrendForce reports that client-grade SSDs of mainstream capacities continue to see rising contract prices in the PC-OEM market during 1Q17. On average, contract prices of MLC-based client-grade SSDs are projected to go up by 12%~16% compared with 4Q16, while prices of TLC-based products are expected to increase by 10~16% sequentially. Looking ahead to the 2Q17, end device sales are anticipated to be relatively flat. (TechNews, Laoyaoba, TrendForce, press, TrendForce[cn], press)
Biometrics
IBM said it believes that human parity is a bit lower than originally thought and has not yet been achieved — 5.1%. IBM reached the 5.5% milestone by combining so-called Long Short-Term Memory, an artificial neural network, and WaveNet language models with three strong acoustic models. (My Drivers, East Day, Engadget, IBM, Android Authority)
Smartphones
Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun indicated the company Xiaomi’s smart hardware ecosystem has made CNY15B revenues by end of 2016. Up to now, Xiaomi has invested in 77 smart hardware companies, 30 have launched their own products, 16 have revenues more than millions, and 3 have revenues of more than billions, 4 have market value of more than USD1B. (iYiou, press, CN Beta)
The effect of counterfeiting on smartphone sales worldwide is estimated at 184M units, valued at EUR45.3B or 12.9% of total sales, according to a new report from the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), in collaboration with ITU. In the European Union alone, 14M fewer smartphones were sold by the legitimate industry than would have been the case in the absence of counterfeiting. This translates to approximately EUR4.2B lost due to the presence of counterfeit smartphones. (CN Beta, 163, ITU4U, EU IPO, report)
OPPO will replace broadcasting giants Star India as the official sponsor of the Indian cricket team from 1 Apr 2017, winning the bid with a sum of INR1,079 crore. This means that Oppo Mobiles branding will now be featured prominently on the Indian Cricket team jerseys and kit. (CN Beta, MSN, The Hindu, Indian Express, Financial Express)
Baferton Ltd, a Cyprus-registered vehicle funded by Hakan Uzan, has paid around GBP50M to acquire the UK manufacturer Vertu from its Chinese owners Godin Holdings. In 2015, 450K Vertu phones were sold with ASP of about USD6000. (Android Central, The Telegraph, Phone Arena, CN Beta)