IF / News

Chipsets

Huawei consumer business CEO Richard Yu attributed the success of the company’s devices to its innovative Kirin processor, which he claims is far more complex than Intel’s chips. He also claimed Huawei spends around USD10B a year on research and development, placing it as the world’s third highest R&D spender behind Intel and Microsoft. (Gizmo China, My Drivers)

Andes Technology is the leading Asia-based supplier of small, low-power, high performance 32-bit embedded CPU cores. Andes President, Frankwell Jyh-Ming Lin indicates that the increase in royalties has been significant, growing 10 fold from 2013 to 2016 and increasing 60% in 4Q16. MediaTek owns 14.91% stake in Andes. (Laoyaoba, EE Focus, Andes Technology)

Meizu, which currently supplies over 90% of its smartphones with MediaTek application processor (AP) solutions, is expected to begin largely adopting AP solutions from Qualcomm in 3Q17, and 30% of Meizu’s shipments in the year are expected to be Qualcomm-powered models, according to Digitimes. OPPO and vivo have begun lower the ratio of MediaTek’s AP solutions used in their total smartphone production in 4Q16. (Digitimes, press, Elecfans, EEPW)

There will be autonomous vehicles by 2023 or 2024, says Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, and Intel wants to be first to influence that trend. (CN Beta, CNBC)

In collaboration with Qualcomm, Thailand’s largest mobile operator Advanced Info Service (AIS) has rolled out its commercial LTE-Advanced, or 4.5G network. “We expect at least 30% of the 15M~18M new smartphone shipments to Thailand in 2017 to be 4.5G-enabled handsets,” said Wasit Wattanasap, VP for radio planning and operations at AIS.  (CN Beta, Nation Multimedia, Bangkok Post)

Touch Display

Sharp chairman Dai Zhengwu indicates that to build a factory in US, local government support is required. He also indicates that there is no firm plan about building a factory to produce TV display panels in US yet, and this plan is in collaboration with Foxconn Technology. (Laoyaoba, FPDisplay, EE Focus)

Memory

Transcend Information chairman ‎Chung-Won Shu indicates that DRAM is not really in shortage, just its price is raising. The real shortage is actually TLC NAND Flash. Transcend currently shifting to industrial products, which are using MLC NAND Flash. The supply is sufficient. It expects in 3D NAND yield rate will be smoother in 2018, and the whole NAND Flash supply-demand will be more balanced. (Digitimes, Laoyaoba, Apple Daily)

Biometrics

Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) has invented a new technology entitled “lip motion password” (lip password) which utilises a person’s lip motions to create a password. (CN Beta, HKBU, Science Daily)

Rosenblatt Securities’s Jun Zhang thinks what may be delaying Apple a bit is OLED glass production, specifically “the under-glass finger print sensor solution might be the reason,” and “initial OLED model production would be very slow due to the OLED panel and driver capacity constraints.” (Laoyaoba, Barron’s, blog)

Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S8 is reportedly unlikely to feature on-screen fingerprint scanning after its touch sensor partner Synaptics ran out of time for developing the related technology. (Laoyaoba, IB Times,  WCCFTech, The Investors)

The rumor that Apple will be adding Touch ID to the next iPhone is being met with skepticism by Korean display tech firms. More specifically, the Korean display firm noted that “It is still extremely difficult to develop transparent sensors and components to be used for an all-screen smartphone,” expressing skepticism about Apple’s pending adoption. (CN Beta, PC Authority, Patently Apple)

Smartphones

Security researchers at Check Point Software Technologies have found  instances of malware that came preinstalled on 36 Android devices, which include brands like Samsung, Xiaomi and OPPO. The malicious apps were not part of the official ROM supplied by the vendor, and were added somewhere along the supply chain.  (Laoyaoba, BGR, IB Times, Check Point)

Without nationalizing the core components (technologies and supplies), even the tremendous growth of domestic smartphone business, still it is not really owned by the nation.  Upstream components are controlled by foreign vendors, it is not possible to be really profitable. (EE World, article, Laoyaoba)

If Foxconn to build a factory in US with the same size as Zhengzhou, China, it seems it only needs 280K staff. Yet, considering the monthly  turnover rate of 5%, that means in 1 year there would be 60% staff leaving their posts, and to keep the operation, the factory must hire the same number of staff. So, if the factory is to operate for 10 years, that means the cumulative staff to employ would be 1.9M people.  (Laoyaoba, Tencent, QDaily, press)

In 2016 360 Mobile sold 5M units of phone, and now in 2017 360 mobile president Li Kaixin has 2 aims: 1. to be profitable, and 2. to survive with dignity. 360 CEO Zhou Hongyi told Mr. Li that mobile phone business will definitely continue, and for other businesses such as VR, AR, AI, mobile phone is strategically vital. (Laoyaoba, Tencent)

Xiaomi has signed an agreement with Warner Music, which owns Atlantic Records, Warner Bros. Records, and Parlophone Records. (CN Beta, CNMO, 163, Gizmo China)

Steven Milunovich of UBS writes that the US premium smartphone market returned to growth in the Dec 2016 quarter at up 8% with Apple outgrowing the market with a 19% growth. Correspondingly, in Europe, the premium market swelled 4%, with Apple climbing 16%. (CN Beta, Apple Insider)

Xiaomi, Gionee, Huawei and Honor are battling at the offline channels in 2017. (iFeng, CN Beta)

Entry-level LG Fortune is launched at Cricket Wireless – 5” FWVGA display, quad-core processor, 5MP + 5MP cameras, 1GB RAM, 16GB storage, Android 6.0, 2500mAh battery, USD89.99. (GSM Arena, Cricket Wireless, Phone Dog)

Wearables

Digitimes Research believes that if 2016 is the year of VR, then 2017 is the year when VR is becoming mass. Digitimes summarizes 4 factors for VR to go mass: affordable, more applications (other than games), portable / wireless, and standardization. (Laoyaoba, Digitimes, press, EE World)

Economy

According to Fortune Character, in China by 2016, there are more than 4M people whose wealth is more than CNY10M, and 150K people whose wealth is more than CNY1B. Currently there are more than 70M China middle-class who has net assets of more than CNY1M . The combined wealth is about USD300K , exceeding US and Japan. (My Drivers, Tencent, CTCNN, iFeng, Pinchain)