China's IC industry output value grew 20.8% from a year earlier to CNY115.29 billion (US$18.1 billion) in the first quarter of 2018, according to statistics released by the China Semiconductor Industry Association (CSIA).

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted US$2.69 billion in billings worldwide in April 2018 (three-month average basis), according to SEMI. The billings figure is 10.7% higher than the revised March level of US$2.43 billion and 26% above the April 2017 billings level of...

Pure-play foundries in China and Taiwan intend to encourage their fabless firms to transition to 12-inch wafer manufacturing as their 8-inch fab capacity has been extremely tight, according to industry sources.

UniMax Electronics, a Asustek Computer company, has been enhancing its deployments in the smart driving market by rolling out an array of smart devices such as in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems and advanced driving-assistance systems (ADAS) to deliver smart driving experiences to users.

ASMedia Technology, which makes high-speed transmission chips for AMD, is expected to see its annual revenues hit a new high in 2018, as the US client is gaining impressive momentum to challenge Intel and Nvidia by launching a spate of new series of processors, significantly benefiting its contract...

Foundry houses raising quotes for 8-inch capacity amid tight supply are creating pressure on IC designers' profit margins in the short term, but in the long run could be a stabilizing factor in terms of profitability deterring downstream clients from asking for unreasonable price reductions, according...

Infineon Technologies has announced a plan to build a new factory for power semiconductors - a fully automated chip factory for manufacturing 300mm thin wafers.

After acquiring Silego Technology, a US supplier of configurable mixed-signal ICs (CMIC), for US$306 million in late 2017, UK-based Dialog Semiconductor has launched new series of GreenPAK CMIC devices, providing engineers with a brand-new set of total IC design solutions.

China IT conglomerate Tsinghua Unigroup has kicked off a spate of investment projects designed to step up the development of its cloud business and turn itself into the country's strongest public cloud service provider, according to group chairman Zhao Weiguo.

The world's top-15 semiconductor companies' sales surged by 26% in the first quarter of 2018 compared to a year ago, six points higher than the total worldwide semiconductor industry increase of 20%, according to IC Insights. Of the top-15 semiconductor companies, 13 enjoyed double-digit sales growth...

The ongoing shortage of MLCCs is affecting negatively shipments of Taiwan-based IC design houses, with some of the companies likely to revise downward their shipment goals for the second quarter, according to industry sources.

With USB Type-C connector gaining momentum to become a mainstream interface for smartphones, PCs and notebooks, global market demand for Type-C chips is estimated to see an annual growth of over 30% in 2018, prompting Taiwan analog IC design houses to develop new-generation Type-C interface chip solutions...

IC distributor WT Microelectronics expects demand from the communications sector to fall sequentially in the second quarter citing ongoing inventory adjustments at handset companies.

Bitmain has reportedly placed DRAM orders mainly for low-capacity DDR3 chips with Taiwan-based memory design specialists Elite Semiconductor Memory Technology (ESMT) and Etron Technology, according to a recent Chinese-language Commercial Times report.

MediaTek is expected to see its shipments of IoT chips expand significantly in the second half of 2018, buoyed by Google's release of Android Things 1.0, according to industry sources.

IC design house ALi, which specializes in set-top box (STB) chipset solutions, has reported a 9th consecutive quarterly loss in the first quarter of 2018 in which net losses came to NT$96.3 million (US$3.23 million) or NT$0.33 per share.

Lite-On Semiconductor has reported net profits of NT$91.89 (US$3.1 million) for the first quarter of 2018, up 200% sequentially and 12% on year. EPS for the quarter came to NT$0.30.

MediaTek has announced consolidated revenues for April 2018 fell 5.5% sequentially but grew 7.1% on year to NT$19.02 billion (US$637.9 million).

Foundry chipmaker Powerchip Technology plans to build a new 12-inch wafer plant in the Tongluo campus of Hsinchu Science Park (HSP) in Miaoli, northern Taiwan with total investment estimated at nearly NT$300 billion (US$10.1 billion), according to company founder and CEO Frank Huang.

Thanks to strong rush orders from China smartphone makers, Taiwan-based suppliers of LCD driver ICs are all optimistic about revenue growths in the second quarter of 2018, but their actual performances may hinge largely on whether they can get sufficient foundry support amid the increasingly tight...

Himax Technologies, a supplier and fabless manufacturer of display drivers and other semiconductor products, has reported its first-quarter 2018 revenues declined 10.1% sequentially to US$162.9 million, meeting the high end of the company's guidance.

Taiwan-based Answer Technology (ANStek), which distributes mainly ICs designed for niche-market applications, has reported consolidated revenues for April 2018 increased 6.7% sequentially and 24.3% on year to a record high of NT$405 million (US$13.6 million).

The spread of digital camera applications in vehicles, machine vision, human recognition and security systems, as well as for more powerful camera phones will drive CMOS image sensor sales to an 8th straight record-high level in 2018 with worldwide revenues growing 10% to US$13.7 billion, following...

Members of Qualcomm's top management are still divided over whether the company should stay in or withdraw from the server market, despite reportedly having sharply reduced R&D resources for the segment, industry sources have said in response to speculation that the vendor is mulling terminating...

Parade Technologies, a supplier of mixed-signal ICs for display and high-speed interface standards, has reported consolidated revenues fell to a 21-month low of NT$572 million (US$19.2 million) in April 2018.