IF / News

Siltronic AG, a German manufacturer of silicon wafers, has revealed that it is in advanced talks to be acquired by Taiwan’s GlobalWafers for EUR3.75B (USD4.5B). Headquartered in Munich, Siltronic is a leading manufacturer of silicon wafers used in products such as smartphones, computers, navigation and digital displays. (CN Beta, Bloomberg, UDN)

The Belgian semiconductor research institute IMEC, which cooperates with ASML to develop photolithography machines, has revealed the technical details of the 3nm and below process at the microscale level. At least for now, ASML has made a clear route plan for 3nm, 2nm, 1.5nm, 1nm and even Sub 1nm, and the volume of the lithography machine in the 1nm era will increase a lot. (CN Beta, EE World, Semiconductor Digest, Semi Engineering)

The US president Donald Trump administration is poised to add China’s top chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) and national offshore oil and gas producer China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) to a blacklist of alleged Chinese military companies. (Reuters, Reuters, Gizmo China, DW)

Samsung Display will begin trail runs of its production line for Quantum Dot (QD) displays in Dec 2020. The Gen-8 line (2200×2500mm), dubbed Q1, at its factory in Asan, is designed to produce QD-OLED (organic light emitting diode) panels. QD-OLED will be the first iteration of Samsung Display’s so-called QD displays. (CN Beta, The Elec, Gizmo China)

Apple has reportedly started sending foldable iPhones to its assembly partner Foxconn for testing purposes with a possible release in Sept 2022. The testing involves evaluating the use of OLED or Micro-LED display technology. Apple has also asked Foxconn to perform over 100,000 opening and closing tests. (Economic Times, CN Beta)

Sharp affiliate Sakai Display Products (SDP) has requested an injunction against the Japanese arm of Corning, to stop the glassmaker’s alleged sale to third parties without SDP’s consent in violation of a contract between the two companies. (Laoyaoba, Asia Nikkei, Digitimes)

Visionox has revealed that the Guangzhou project acquired land in Mar 2020, cap it in Aug, and start trial production in Dec. The company plans to hold the first screen lighting ceremony on 18 Dec 2020 and mass production in Jan 2021. Visionox’s Gen-6 flexible AMOLED module production line project, with a planned total investment of CNY11.2B, is mainly engaged in the production, research and development and sales of small and medium-sized full-flex AMOLED modules. The products cover emerging application fields such as curved surfaces, half-folds, wearables and vehicles. Annual production capacity is about 50M modules. (Laoyaoba, Sohu, OLED-Info, Visionox)

Huawei has entered OLED driver chip development with its new self developed OLED driver chip. China’s driver ICs for displays account for less than 1% of the total market share. The OLED driver chip market is dominated by South Korean companies like Samsung, which accounts for nearly 75% of market, and Magnachip accounting for about 20%. (CN Beta, Gizmo China, My Drivers)

According to Digitimes, Apple is embracing mini-LED display backlighting technology for some products. Apple is set to launch its first mini-LED iPad Pro in 1Q21 and mass produce mini-LED MacBook Pro models in 2Q21. Apple’s suppliers in Taiwan, including LED chip vendor Epistar, testing and sorting specialist FitTech, SMT service provider Taiwan Surface Mounting Technology, backlight board supplier Zhen Ding Technology, cooling solution provider Auras Technology and process equipment maker All Ring Technology, are all ready to gain growth momentum from upcoming shipments for Apple’s mini-LED-backlit devices. (Digitimes, Mac Rumors, CN Beta)

Digitimes claims that Apple is now looking to cooperate with Samsung for the periscope lens as it is trying to strengthen the optical zoom performance on the upcoming iPhones. Samsung has also used the periscope lens on its flagship smartphones, enabling a massive 100x zoom. (Gizmo China, Digitimes, 10JQKA, Sina)

realme patents a smartphone design with unique oval-shaped camera bump. The oval-shaped bump includes four circular holes and a rectangular opening. The circular holes on the left-right side are smaller than the top-bottom openings. Hence, the former two or at least one of them could be for LED flash. (Gizmo China, IT Home)

Chinese venture capital investors are shifting their focus to Indonesia after India closed its doors to them, helping to create a 55% surge in tech investment in south-east Asia’s biggest economy in 1H20. Shunwei Capital, launched by the founders of mobile phone maker Xiaomi, and BAce Capital, which is backed by the fintech giant Ant Group, both said they were pivoting from India to Indonesia. (FT, FT Chinese, Gizmo China)

Worldwide smartphone sales to end-users totaled 366M units in 3Q20, down 5.7% from 3Q19, according to Gartner. Overall global mobile phone sales to end users totaled 401M units, a decline of 8.7% year-over-year. After 2 consecutive quarters of a decline of 20%, quarterly smartphone sales have started to show signs of recovery sequentially. However, smartphone sales continued to remain weaker compared to the same time period in in 2019. (TechCrunch, Gartner, CN Beta)

Italy’s competition authority has fined Apple EUR10M for misleading consumers about the water-resistance of its iPhones. Apple advertised several iPhone models as resistant to water for up to 30 minutes, even a few meters under water, but it did not make clear that this is only true under specific conditions (pure water in a laboratory), which are far from real-life ones. (My Drivers, Channel News Asia, Politico, AGCM)

According to Wedbush Securities, global demand for electric vehicles is surging, noting that 3% of all auto sales are electric. The firm expects that number to more than triple to 10% by 2025. This demand dynamic will disproportionately benefit the clear EV category leader Tesla over the next few years especially in the key China region which we believe could represent ~40% of its EV deliveries by 2022. Tesla remains within reach of its 2020 target to deliver 500K vehicles. Tesla could even double its current production rate to 1M vehicles by 2023. (CN Beta, Benzinga, The Street, Business Insider)

The domain name douyinpay.com has been assigned to the registrar “eName”, which is commonly used by ByteDance to store its own domain name. It is parallel to the registered domain names such as feishuhuiyi.com and feishudoc.com. Prior to this, ByteDance has been continuously cultivating related financial businesses. (CN Beta, CN Beta, IT Home)

According to Goldman economists led by Jan Hatzius and Daan Struyven, in the US, high-risk groups will probably start receiving doses of a vaccine by the mid-Dec 2020, which could provide substantial public health benefits by Mar 2021. They expect Britain will have vaccinated about 50% of its population by Mar 2020, while Canada and the US will have done so in Apr. The EU, Australia, and Japan will likely reach that point by May, and vaccinations may exceed 70% in all developed economies by the fall. (Quartz, Sina, CN Beta)