IF / News

Chipsets

Cambricon Technologies, a Chinese artificial intelligence chip maker, has raised USD100M in series A round to develop processors for cloud and terminals and provide high-performance and low-power cloud processor solutions. (CN Beta, Global Uni Venturing, China Money Network)

Thanks to launch of new platforms from Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, PC and GPU demand for metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) has increased, causing shortage and quarterly cost up. Sinopower, Niko-Semi, A-Power and other MOSFET vendors will benefit from this trend in 2H17. (Laoyaoba, SEMI, China Times)

OPPO 2H17 product roadmap is leaked. Two new devices of OPPO A series are using MediaTek SoC—A61s launched in 4Q17 to use Helio P23, and A41 to use MT6750. This implies that MediaTek has not received orders for OPPO R series, and 1H18 is an imporrant period to win back such orders. (Laoyaoba, UDN)

Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple are launching their smart speakers, also bike sharing is mass in Mainland China, which have contributed to MediaTek’s 2Q17 revenues. These related market, which are known as growing segment, is expected to grow 30% for MediaTek in 2017. MediaTek smartphone SoC shipment was 500M units in 2016, and even though in 2017 this will drop 20% to 400M units, smartphone SoC is still the company’s most shipped products. (EE World, Laoyaoba, UDN, Asia Nikkei)

Touch Display

Phone sizes continue to increase as their share of the market has grown, CCS Insight said. For device manufacturers, bigger devices support higher average selling prices (ASP). For wireless operators, larger phones drive higher average revenue per user (ARPU). CCS Insight believes there is a direct relationship between display size and content consumption: larger screens boost larger data buckets. Furthermore, the increasing prices of bigger phones could cause operators to require longer contracts, turning 2 year deals into 3, reducing post-paid churn. (Android Headlines, Fierce Wireless, CCS Insight)

Japan Display Inc (JDI) considers licensing its smartphone OLED technologies, planning after establishing OLED mass production technologies in mid 2019, it will begin licensing technolgies in 2H20 or 2021. (Laoyaoba, TechNews)

Camera

O-Film riding the wave of camera going high-end and dual-camera opportunities, its camera module business has reached CNY6.634B, 101.66% up on year, shipment has reached more than 200Mpcs. Currently single camera monthly production has reached 50Mpcs, dual camera has reached 8Mpcs, and expects to expand to 60M~65Mpcs and 15Mpcs, respectively. (Sina, Laoyaoba)

Sunny optical component business in 1H17 has reached CNY1.895B, 46.8% upon year. Mobile phone camera shipment has reached 81.2% increase on year. In particular, >10MP shipment share has increased from 17.1% in 1H16 to 42.9%; 16MP 1.65”and specific for 18:9 display, as well as 20MP camera has already entered mass production. (Laoyaoba, 52RD, Sina, ETNet)

Sensory

Sony has released Neural Network Console, freely available software that lets even novice programmers create deep-learning technology. Developing artificial intelligence usually involves writing massive amounts of code to create an artificial neural network, a mechanism inspired by the human brain, and training these networks to recognize images, sounds and other data. (Laoyaoba, IT Home, Asia Nikkei)

Microsoft has unveiled a new system for doing high-speed, low-latency serving of machine learning models. The company showed off a new system called Brainwave that will allow developers to deploy machine learning models onto programmable silicon and achieve high performance beyond what they’d be able to get from a CPU or GPU. (VentureBeat, Microsoft, Sohu, ZOL, Sina)

Biometrics

According to Sigma Intell, global smartphone with fingerprint scanner shipment has reached 180M units in 1Q17, which is 53.7% of all shipment, and expects this share will increase to 57% in 2Q17. Since 2017, Goodix, EgisTec have received orders from tier 1 vendors of Mainland China and Korea generating revenues for the companies. Silead, Elan, Holtek have entered notebook, smart home, financial segments. (Sigma Intell, press, Laoyaoba)

Smartphones

Fujitsu spun off its mobile phone operations into a separate unit in Feb 2016 and has been looking for a partner since then as it focused on its core businesses and as competition in the sector remains high. The unit has drawn interest from investment funds including Tokyo-based Polaris Capital and CVC Capital Partners. Lenovo Group and Hon Hai Precision Industry were also thought to be in the mix. (Android Headlines, Deal Street Asia, Financial Times, The Register, Sohu, C114, My Drivers)

According to the latest research from Counterpoint, the smartphones shipments in Latin America grew 9% annually during 2Q17 driven by improved macroeconomic climate, LTE rollout and open channel growth in some markets. Samsung share in smartphone segment rose to a healthy and highest ever 41% level while Motorola was the fastest growing brand. (Laoyaoba, Counterpoint Research, press)

Global sales of smartphones to end users totaled 366.2M units in 2Q17, a 6.7% increase over 2Q16, according to Gartner. In the smartphone operating system market, Android extended its lead with 87.7% market share, while iOS accounted for 12.1%. (Laoyaoba, Gartner, press)

Meizu Flow headsets have 2 versions is exposed having 2 versions, of which the China version is using low-cost version. Meizu indicates both versions comply with the audio requirements, and the reason of using Knowles for international is to avoid potential lawsuit. (TechNews, CN Beta, EET-China)

Meizu’s SVP Li Nan announced that up to now Meizu’s M series has reached more than 45M units sales. He also indicates that there is no fixed sales target for Meizu M6 Note, but he believes that M series can reach 20M sales in 2017. (CN Beta, JRJ, Sohu, Sina)

A federal court in New York has approved a class action lawsuit against Sony for overstating claims that its Xperia line of phones and tablets were “waterproof”. The lawsuit alleges that Xperia owners were misled by Sony’s marketing verbiage, as the devices are not designed for underwater use and are more on the water-resistant level of protection.  (Laoyaoba, Tencent, 52RD, Engadget, Xperia, The Verge)

Micromax Canvas Infinity with 18:9 display is launched – 5.7” HD+ (1440×720) display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 processor, rear 13MP + front 16MP cameras, 3GB RAM, 32GB storage, Android 7.1, 2900mAh battery, INR9,999. (Android Authority, NDTV, Indian Express, First Post)

Gionee X1 debuts in India – 5” HD IPS LCD display, MediaTek MT6737 processor, 8MP + 8MP cameras, 2GB RAM, 16GB storage, Android 7.0, 3000mAh battery, INR8,999. (Android Headlines, NDTV, GSM Arena)

Alcatel U5 HD is launched – 5” HD IPS LCD display, MediaTek MT6737 processor, 8MP + 5MP cameras, 1GB RAM, 8GB storage, Android 6.0, 2200mAh battery. (GSM Arena, Android Headlines, Alcatel)

Luxurious phone Lamborghini Alpha One is launched – 5.5” QHD 2560×1440 display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, 20MP OIS + 8MP cameras, 4GB RAM, 64GB storage, Android 7.0, USB Type-C, 3250mAh battery, USD2450. (Liliputing, The Verge, Neowin)

Coolpad Cool Play 6 is launched in Amazon India – 5.5” FHD display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 653 processor, rear dual 13MP-13MP + front 8MP cameras, 6GB RAM, 64GB storage, Android 7.1, 4000mAh battery, INR14,999. (NDTV, GSM Arena, Economic Times)

Protruly launching VR handset V10S and V11S, featuring 5.5” FHD IPS display, VR panoramic camera module 26MP (thickest 13.8mm), and single 2D camera each rear and front, Android 7.1: V10S – Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB storage, 3300mAh battery, CNY4999. V11S – Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, 6GB RAM, 128GB storage, 3200mAh battery, CNY9999.  (Laoyaoba, Kuwankeji, Kejilie, Sohu)

Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is official – 6.3” QHD+ (1440×2960) Super AMOLED display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 / Samsung Exynos 8895 processor, rear dual 12MP-12MP + 8MP cameras, 6GB RAM, 64 / 128 / 256GB storage, iris scanner, rear fingerprint scanner, IP68 certified, 3300mAh battery. (GSM Arena, Sky.com, Telegraph, TechRadar, Leiphone)

Meizu M6 Note is launched – 5.5” FHD display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor, rear dual 12MP-5MP + front 16MP cameras, 3 / 4GB RAM, 16 / 32 / 64GB storage, Android 7.1 (Flyme OS 6.0), USB Type-C, 4000mAh battery, from CNY1099. (Gizmo China, The Verge, GSM Arena, CN Beta)