IF / News

Chipsets

Samsung Foundry, the foundry operations of Samsung Electronics, has set its goal of moving its advanced 3nm process technology to volume production as early as 2021. However, due to the outbreak of the epidemic, Samsung’s 3nm schedule may be postponed to 2022. There are currently no orders for bags, which is far from TSMC’s 3nm orders from Apple and Huawei HiSilicon. Recently, the market is rumored that TSMC has only delayed the progress of the 3nm, and Apple has also postponed the mass production of the 5nm A14 application processor. Therefore, the market has become conservative for TSMC’s 2020 performance. (Digitimes, Digitimes)

The 1H20 overall shipment of Apple’s iPhone has been confirmed to be reduced. Recently, TSMC’s vacated capacity has recently been squeezed by large manufacturers. It is worth noting that this wave of epidemics has the biggest impact on Samsung Electronics. The market has repeatedly reported that TSMC 3nm will delay the installation schedule due to insufficient equipment supply. The major customer Apple will postpone the 5nm A14 application processor schedule for 1~2 quarters. (Digitimes, press)

Camera

Huawei or Honor could be working on a smartphone with 55x digital zoom capability. Apart from the optical zoom functionality, these smartphones also support a very high digital zoom capability, up to 50x zoom on P30 Pro / P40 Pro and 100x zoom on the P40 Pro Plus. (Gizmo China, CN Beta, Sohu, My Drivers)

Material

On a 12-month view, Gold-Silver are atop a virus-hit landscape, as any growth stability restores inflation expectations too. Steel and its key inputs of Met-Coal and Mn-Ore become China-backed defensives in this weak market. Base metals are among Macquarie’s least-preferred plays: Copper, Zinc & Lead all struggle in 2020, awaiting the economic lift beyond. Iron ore prices are holding for now on China’s promise of stimulus, but they fade in their forecasts. Post-correction, they are still Palladium / Rhodium bears. (Macquarie report)

Sinolink Securities has consolidated the production capacity of 35 major copper foil manufacturers in China and the actual production capacity in 2020. A total of 35 companies can produce 17,500 tons of PCB copper foil of and 62,000 tons of lithium battery copper foil. (Sinolink Securities report)

Connectivity

According to Nokia’s recent filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, based on average figures, around 4,800 jobs were lost in 2019, or almost 5% of the total. One in ten jobs has gone to North America. About 9% have disappeared in China. (CN Beta, OltNews)

Phone

According to the company CEO Tim Cook, as it mobilizes its supply chain, employees, and partners to provide personal protective equipment to medical workers and others working to stop the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic, Apple  has sourced over 20M face masks and is now building and shipping face shields. The company is working with governments around the world to distribute its supply of face masks to where it’s needed most. (CN Beta, TechCrunch, Twitter)

Xiaomi is facing increasing competition from Huawei, OPPO and vivo in the domestic market in China as those rival brands have also enhanced their deployments in IoT plus 5G ecosystems, taking on Xiaomi’s IoT operations, according to Digitimes. Meanwhile, Xiaomi’s handset shipments to Europe and emerging markets such as India will be affected seriously in 2020 by the pandemic, noting that Xiaomi’s handset shipments to Spain, France and Italy grew over 60% on year in 2019. (Digitimes, press, China Times, Digitimes)

Considering that the scale of the pandemic continues to grow, the forecast of this year’s smartphone production has again been revised. The total worldwide smartphone production volume in 2020 is now projected to reach 1.29B units, a drop of 7.8% from 2019. The downward correction is attributed to the recession that follows the pandemic as well as the downgrade in shipments (sell-ins) in Europe and North America, which are now the most hard-hit regions of the world. (TrendForce, TrendForce, press)

vivo V19 (dual selfie) is launched in India – 6.44” 1080×2400 FHD+ 2xHiD Super AMOLED, Qualcomm Snapdragon 712, rear quad 48MP-8MP ultrawide-2MP macro-2MP depth + front dual 32MP-8MP ultrawide, 8+128GB, Android 10.0, under display fingerprint, 4500mAh 33W, INR24,999 (USD328).  (GSM Arena, vivo, Gizmo China)

Augmented / Virtual Reality

Apple is believed to be in the process of acquiring a California-based virtual reality (VR) company called NextVR for around USD100M. The company has a decade of experience marrying VR with sports and entertainment. (Apple Insider, 9to5Mac, CN Beta)

The Kenyan augmented reality (AR) game developer Internet of Elephants launched its latest game in partnership with the conservation science experts from the Borneo Nature Foundation, Goualougo Triangle Ape Foundation, Zoo Atlanta and Chester Zoo. The new game, Wildeverse, uses AR to create a virtual forest that players can explore to find certain animals — or clues to an animal’s whereabouts. (TechCrunch, Wildeverse)

Home

According to China State Sports General Administration, the overall size of China’s sports industry market was CNY1.9T in 2016, accounting for 0.9% of China’s GDP, and its proportion is increasing year by year. Compared with 2012, the average annual compound growth rate of the total output value and added value of the sports industry is close to 20%, superimposing the continuous introduction of encouraging policies at the national level, the industry will maintain rapid development. (TF Securities report)

According to the China Sporting Goods Federation, the market size of the Chinese fitness equipment industry has increased from CNY25.2B in 2010 to CNY38.79B in 2017, with a compound annual growth rate of 6.4%. The market size is expected to grow to CNY47B by 2020. (TF Securities report)

According to TF Securities, Tianfeng Securities, from the domestic perspective of China, the current smart home fitness industry in China is mainly divided into two categories: (1) Enterprises headed by Huawei and Xiaomi that enters the market with smart fitness hardware and penetrates into family life scenarios; (2) Fitness data platform company mainly based on Keep, Codoon, etc. All kinds of enterprises are gradually planning the layout in the field of home intelligent fitness. (TF Securities report)

Automotive

Tesla is retooling its operations to build ventilators. Hospital-grade oxygen goes into Tesla’s mixing chamber (a car part used in Tesla’s vehicles). It is subsequently pumped through Tesla’s custom designed manifold, which is powered by vehicle computers and controlled by the infotainment system. Patient’s parameters are then displayed on the Model 3’s main display. (Engadget, TechCrunch, Business Insider, Neowin, IT Home)

Economy

COVID-19 has taken a toll on the workforce, and you can now see a list of who’s hiring, freezing hires, laying people off, and rescinding job offers, according to crowdsourced data from Candor, a company that helps tech workers negotiate salaries. So far, the company has received reports from about 400 companies (now more than 1,000 companies), and 267, or 60%, said they were implementing hiring freezes. Candidates reported having job offers rescinded in 36 cases (18%) while layoffs occurred in 44 companies (13%). (Candor, VentureBeat, CN Beta)