IF / News

Chinese New Year is done, and now let’s quickly recap last 2 weeks news:

Headlines:

• Intel will establish a 7nm pilot plant in 2017 as it tries to keep Moore’s Law alive
• MediaTek says its investment subsidiary will acquire 40% stake (24.2M shares) in Airoha Technology Corp
• MediaTek has teamed up with CMOS image sensor supplier Pixart Imaging to roll out 3D tracking and gesture controller solutions
• MediaTek has announced the launch of its Helio P25
• Xiaomi is reportedly developing its own processor dubbed Pinecone, and now 2 models V970 and V670 are leaked
• Xiaomi India head Manu Jain said that Xiaomi to become the biggest smartphone manufacturer in terms of sales in India within in 3~5 years
• Xiaomi has begun making phones in a new plant in Indonesia, with the capacity up to 1M units a month and specifically for the local market
• GlobalFoundries will open a new factory to make cheap wireless chips in Chengdu, China in 2018
• Samsung reportedly is developing clam-type smartphones and is expected to begin small production of its first foldable model featuring a flexible AMOLED display in 4Q17
• Samsung is rumored to expand its 3D NAND fab in China Xi’an, and it is estimated that the overall investment will amount to KRW5T (about USD4.35B).
• Intel is now shipping the first-generation Optane but is also working on next-generation technologies

Numbers:

A series of financial reports—

• Sony has posted a JPY19.6B (USD169B) profit on revenue of JPY2,397.5B (USD20.7B) for FY 3Q16
• Apple disclosed that it produced a USD17.8B profit, on USD78.35B in sales in FY 1Q17
• Facebook announced 4Q16 earnings, generating USD8.81B in revenue
• Snap aims to raise USD3B in the initial public offering (IPO)

A series of market numbers—

• According to Strategy Analytics, global smartphone shipments grew 3% annually to hit a record 1.5B units in 2016
• According to IDC, smartphone vendors shipped a total of 428.5M units during 4Q16
• Global smartphone sales reached 1.41B in 2016, according to GfK
• Apple has accounted for 18% of smartphone unit sales in 4Q16, but it captured a whopping 92% of industry profits, Canaccord Genuity reported
• According to IDC, vendors shipped 52.9M tablets in 4Q16, which was a decline of 20.1% from the same quarter one year ago
• According to Strategy Analytics, global smartwatch shipments grew 1% annually to hit a record 8.2M units in 4Q16
• Super Data estimates the market size of virtual reality in 2016, suggesting 6.3M VR headsets were shipped in 2016