Finance

Rohm is spending Y450m buying Renesas’ 8inch Shiga fab. After completing the deal, planned for February next year, which involves leasing the land and buildings, the line will mainly make IGBTs, mosfets and piezoelectric MEMS on a 0.15μm process, and will be Rohm’s main site for power and MEMS.  “Rohm regards power and sensor devices as one of the four growth engines ...

Six top 20 companies had 20%+ growth in Q1 compared to Q1 2014, reports IC Insights. Mediatek entered the top 10 while ST dropped out. Sharp and UMC moved into the top 20 while Nvidia and AMD moved out.

The SEMI book-to-bill was 1.04 in April compared to 1.10 in March and 1.03 in February.

Industrial semiconductor revenues grew by 18% after 13% growth in 2013. in 2014, according to IHS. It was the highest annual growth since the 36% boom in 2010. The sector is now worth $40 billion a year. The IHS list the market drivers as: automation control, commercial avionics, LED lighting, digital internet-protocol cameras, climate control, renewable energy, traction, wireless application-specific ...

The power management semiconductor market is expected to continue its positive growth of 5% to 7%, says IHS. Last year the market grew 7% despite a 5% fall in Q4.

According to the New York Post, Intel and Altera have renewed takeover talks.

Intel has been looking into the near future at its Future Showcase 2015 Looking to get into homes, and with an eye on start-ups, is was showing a home gateway based around the firm’s Galileo development board. “It allows makers to come up with their own home automation system by providing a cross-platform central hub that can talk to any ...

T.J. Rodgers, Cypress Semiconductor CEO, has written to ISSI offering a higher price for the company than the $640 million proposed by the China investment group, Summitview Capital, in March.

TI now has 18% of the analogue market with $8.1 billion in 2014 revenues, reports IC Insights.

Earlier today, in London,  ST CEO Carlo Bozotti said that the problem with ST’s digital business “needs to be fixed and we will fix it.”