Finance

Unusually for a Future Horizons forecast, today’s was gloomy. Malcolm Penn, CEO of Future Horizons told IFS 2015 in London this morning that he expected 2% semiconductor market growth this year and a flat 2016. “This is what we said in January – 8.5% growth for a $364 billion market,” said Penn. What he’s saying now is that the best ...

The UK government is squeezing more money out of the mobile operators. Regulator Ofcom has announced a significant increased in licence fees for the 900-1800MHzz radio spectrum. Ofcom has today published revised annual fees for mobile operators, determining the amount of money they must pay to use certain parts of mobile spectrum. It is the result of a five year ...

Chip industry bellwether TSMC reckons its Q4 revenues will be less than its Q3 revenues – the first q-on-q drop for four years. Q4 sales are estimated at between $6.08 billion and $6.21 billion while Q3 sales are estimated at $6.45 billion. TSMC blamed the Q4-Q3 sales drop on falling demand for smart phone SoCs with Chairman Morris Chang saying ...

A new device to help tackle sleep apnea has claimed first prize in the ARM Smart Product Design Competition. The Apnea Observer was designed by developer Clemente di Caprio from Rome who has been awarded $5,000 to help advance his prototype. Sleep apnea affects up to a quarter of the general population according to the British Journal of Anaesthesia, with ...

Dialog is to take over Atmel in a deal said to be aimed at strengthening Dialog’s position in IoT markets. “Dialog will complement its leadership position in power management ICs with a leading portfolio of proprietary and ARM-based microcontrollers in addition to high performance ICs for connectivity, touch and security,” says the company, “our new, enlarged company will be a diversified, high-growth ...

Fujitsu Semiconductor and Tera Probe have formed a jv for the wafer test business called Aizu Fujitsu Semiconductor Probe. Aizu Fujitsu Semiconductor Wafer Solution, a subsidiary of Aizu Fujitsu Semiconductor, offers both 150 mm wafer foundry services and 150 mm and 200 mm wafer test services. It provides low volume high-mix support, while Tera Probe offers a low-cost test service ...

The NXP and Freescale merger has been approved by the EC. The condition was the disposal of NXP’s power amplifier business which has been sold to JAC Capital of China. The EC’s ruling stated: “The Commission found that NXP and Freescale are the two largest players and close competitors in the RF power transistors market, in particular those used in base stations ...

China and Japan are working together to produce a robot called Torobo-kun capable of passing the University of Tokyo’s entrance exam, reports the Nikkei. iFlytek, a Chinese artificial intelligence company, is to work with Japan’s National Institute of Informatics (NII) on the project for which China has a budget of $24.6 million – considerably more than the NII’s budget. The ...

The SEMI August book-to-bill ratio was 1.06. Bookings were $1.67 billion which were 5% up on July and 23.8% up on August 2014. Billings were $1.58 billion which was 1.3% above the July billings and 21.9% higher than August 2014. “Given the trends through the year so far, the book-to-bill ratio stayed above parity on a three-month average basis,” says ...

ARM has set itself some aggressive targets in the mobile computing, networking and data-centre markets. ARM expects to double its royalties from mobile computing applications in the next five years, says CFO Chris Kennedy, this will take the figure to around $750 million. Units are expected to grow 7% CAGR till 2020, and the increasing ARM content in SoCs e.g. ...