IF / News

Chipsets

In an effort to strengthen the company’s system-on-chip business, Samsung has moved around 200 employees from its consumer electronics group to its System LSI business. It has been reported that the semiconductor business is already worth around USD343.5B, of which around 77% is attributed to the SoC segment. (Android Headlines, Business Korea)

Samsung Electronics is looking into assigning rear-end package process of its next Exynos AP (Application Processor) with an outside company because it believes that it is currently lacking abilities to perform package process for chips that are smaller than 10nm chips on its own.   (Laoyaoba, ET News)

Worldwide sales of semiconductors reached USD31.3B for the month of Apr 2017, an increase of 20.9% from the Apr 2016 total of USD25.9B and 1.3% more than the previous month’s total of USD30.9B, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). (SIA, press, Digitimes, PR Newswire, East Money)

EU antitrust authorities opened an investigation on Friday into Qualcomm’s USD38B bid for NXP Semiconductors, ratcheting up pressure on the U.S. smartphone chipmaker to offer concessions to address their concerns. EU said the company may bundle its products, excluding rivals in baseband  chipsets and near field communication (NFC) chips. (CN Beta, Reuters, Fortune)

Microsoft plans to release a new version of Windows 10 that runs on devices with ARM-based chips from Qualcomm. The new operating system will include an emulation layer that lets you run Win32 apps. Intel’s Steven Rodgers and Richard A Uhlig have used the 40th anniversary of its x86 architecture to warn chip rivals to mind their step when emulating its instruction set. (Digital Trends, Liliputing, Intel, The Register, Forbes, Sohu, My Drivers)

Touch Display

LCD driver IC supplier Novatek Microelectronics has entered LG’s flexible OLED panel supply chain for Apple’s next generation iPhone and will see shipments of its small- to medium-size LCD driver ICs increase significantly in 2018. While Samsung Electronics will serve as the sole OLED panel supplier for Apple in 2017, LG will begin to share Apple’s OLED panel orders with Samsung in the coming year. (Digitimes, press, UDN)

BOE Technology has invested in inkjet printing-based OLED technology in an attempt to produce 55” OLED TV panels. BOE ordered a set of inkjet printing manufacturing equipment from US-based Kateeva in May 2017 and will set up an experimental OLED production line at its panel factory in Hefei City, central China, on a joint venture basis with the city government. (Digitimes, press, PJTime)

Camera

Digitimes Research observes that AR / VR vendors planning their 3D sensor technology direction, realizing that international vendors have be acquiring 3D sensors vendors to strengthen their own technologies. In particular, time of flight (ToF) is international vendors’ directions for their AR products. (Digitimes, press)

Connectivity

The telecom network equipment manufacturer Nokia laid off 170 employees from its division in Finland. The job cut is part of a plan to save money after it acquired its main competitor the Franco-American Alcatel-Lucent back in 2016. (GSM Arena, Reuters)

Smartphones

After breaking down smartphone sales over 3 years (2013-2016) by geographical region, the report concluded that both China and India are headed for the top 2 spots on the regional sales charts. Currently China is the current leader at 31%, while the U.S. sits in second at 16.7%, says Statista.  (Android Central, Statista, CN Beta)

The Paper citing Guang Dong Dongguan city data, in 2016 Dongguan city has shipped 313M units of mobile phones, of which 302M units are smartphones, a 20.5% of global shipment. In 1Q17, Dongguan city has produced 96.1079M units of mobile phones, a 42.5% growtn on year; and shipped 80.1586M units, a 61.3% growth on year. (Laoyaoba, The Paper)

Xiaomi is reported to be officially entering the South Korean market soon. Dubbed “Mi Korea,” Xiaomi created the Korean-language website at the end of May 2017. (Android Headlines, Korea Herald, 91.com)

Xiaomi India managing director Manu Kumar Jain indicates that the company, which has 2 contract mobile production facilities run by Foxconn at Sri City in Andhra Pradesh, is evaluating its plan for a third unit, and is in talks with a number of state governments.  (52RD, Laoyaoba, The Hindu, Financial Express)

Lenovo Mobile Business Group head Sudhin Mathur indicates the company to be more aggressive in offline retail channel as well, from marketing point of view. They aim to reach 10,000-12,000 retail outlets, and then grow from there. (Android Headlines, Indian Express, Business Insider)

Bluboo S1 is announced – 5.5” FHD Sharp display, MediaTek Helio P25 processor, rear dual 16MP-3MP + front 8MP cameras, 4GB RAM, 64GB storage, 3500mAh battery, USD150. (Android Headlines, Game Sinners, GizChina)

Elephone S8 is announced –  6” 2048×1080 display, MediaTek Helio processor, 21MP + 13MP cameras, 6GB RAM, 128GB storage, Android 7.0, 4000mAh battery. (Elephone, Android Headlines, Gizmo China)

PCs / Tablets

Microsoft has acquired Israeli cybersecurity startup Hexadite. Founded in 2014, Hexadite connects to existing cybersecurity detection systems to analyze threats automatically using artificial intelligence (AI), and helps companies identify and address cyberattacks swiftly when they happen.  (CN Beta, VentureBeat, Calcalist)

All-in-one (AIO) PC shipments are expected to stabilize in both 2017 and 2018 after declining for 3 years in a row. Due to weak demand from the consumer sector, AIO PC shipments were down 1.7% on year to reach only 12.18M units in 2016. (Digitimes, press)

Internet of Things

With more cars beginning to support connection from smartphones, demand for connected cars has been rising and the type of vehicles are expected to account for 29.1% of overall car shipments in 2017 and by 2035, over 90% of cars shipped will be equipped with Internet connectivity, according to data from Fuji Keizai. (Digitimes, press)

Foxconn SVP Chen Zhenguo indicates that driven by low-cost, Sharp’s first 3 months sales has exceeded the sales of 2016.The company has raised global TV sales target in 2017 to 14M units. (CN Beta, Sina, Business Recorder)

Softbank has agreed to purchase Boston Dynamics from Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Masayoshi Son, who is Softbank’s CEO, reportedly feels that smart robotics is the future of the information revolution, stating that “there are many issues that still cannot be solved by human capabilities”.  (Android Headlines, Ars Technica, The Verge, WSJ, Sohu, Sina)