Executive and employees of display and battery production equipment maker Toptec have been found guilty of leaking the technologies of customer Samsung Display to Chinese competitors.The Suwon High Court, the appeals court, overturned a ruling of not guilty from the district court on Tuesday and fou

It seems Japan’s trade restriction against South Korea for certain key materials used in advanced tech production that lasted four years is about to end.The South Korean government has agreed to pay compensation to its own citizens who were forced to work in Japanese factories during World Word Two.

Telechips is developing an AI SoC aimed at autonomous driving applications using IP from Sapeon, the AI chip subsidiary of SK Group, TheElec has learned.The chip supports an advanced driver assistance system and will use Sapeon’s AI accelerator IP, sources said.The chip will be manufactured using Sa

Chip and display equipment maker Global Zeus is aiming to expand its robotics business this year, a company executive told TheElec Global Zeus Factory Automation Business ABD BU head Hwang Jae-ik said the company is planning to double the revenue from its robotics business this year.The company is a

Samsung SDI is planning to supply cylinder batteries to US car giant General Motors, TheElec has learned.The pair will be announcing the formation of a joint venture that will build a battery factory with an annual capacity of at least 30GWh, sources said.Last month, General Motors said it was open

Samsung is starting its reliability test for the waterdrop hinge it will adopt on its next foldable smartphone, likely to be called Galaxy Z Fold 5, TheElec has learned.The final reliability test will last around a month and the company is expected to finalize the concept afterward, sources said.Thi

South Korea’s import of silicon wafers from China reached US$74.882 million in January, close to the US$77.704 million worth imported from Japan in the same month.The country’s import of silicon wafers from China has continued to increase over the years at a paid pace.In 2020, a total of US$424 mill

South Korean outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) companies are seeing the operation rate in their factories drop steeply from the recent downturn of the global chip market.The downturn has caused customer orders to plummet and these companies have operation rates below 50%, sources sai

Registering clock driver chip developer One Semiconductor will begin production of RCD for server DDR5 DRAM during the second half of the year.Company CEO Kim Chang-hyun told TheElec that One Semiconductor was already manufacturing DDR4 RCD as of last year after passing all required quality tests.It

BOE was facing problems in developing OLED panels aimed at Apple’s iPhone 15, TheElec has learned.The hole display was facing a light leakage problem __ where the light that isn’t properly covered by the screen comes from the corners or edges. And in this case, the light was leaking out of the hole

Samsung Display will be using Chemtronics as its vendor to handle the back-end etching of OLED panels it plans to supply to Apple for iPads, TheElec has learned.Chemtronics will be the sole vendor for the process, sources said.Samsung Display and LG Display are gearing up to start production of OLED

South Korea is the largest producer of memory chips. Samsung and SK Hynix combined has a 70% market share in the DRAM market and around 50% in NAND flash.However, they don’t dominate all technologies related to memory chips. For instance, for controllers used in NAND, the pair rely heavily on compan

Chipmaker Magnachip is planning to suspend production at its factory in Gumi, South Korea for a week starting on Saturday.This is unprecedented for a chipmaker as fabs are usually run 24/7 for the full year.Sources said Magnachip was doing so from its high inventory and low demand.Power will still b

Chip component maker KNJ has become a director vendor of silicon carbide (SiC) focus ring to chipmaker SK Hynix, TheElec has learned.Prior to being selected as a direct vendor, KNJ was below in the value chain and supplied unfinished SiC rings to SiC ring suppliers of the chipmaker.SiC rings are use

South Korean blank mask maker S&S Tech is seeing high demand for its blank mask thanks to the high interest and development of AI chips spurred by ChatGPT.Blank masks are used to make photo masks, which are used during the lithography process in chip production where the pattern of the chips is prin

LG Energy Solution said on Thursday that it will be forming a joint venture with Ford and Turkey’s Koc Group that will build a battery factory in Turkey.The three will aim to secure 25GWh in annual production capacity and start production in 2026.Ford and Koc had such an agreement originally with SK

Samsung’s design partners for its chip foundry business saw their operating profits halved in 2022.Samsung Foundry’s Design Solution Partners ADTechnology, Gaonchips, and Coasia saw their revenue and operating margin rate impacted heavily by the global economic downturn.ADTechnology, Samsung’s large

US car giant Ford and South Korean battery maker SK On were in a dispute over the halting of the production F150 Lightning electric truck, TheElec has learned.Ford is claiming SK On’s faulty batteries were the cause. The South Korean company had countered that it was a one-time issue and that there

LG Energy Solution was currently developing lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries for electric vehicles.The aim is to have the LFP batteries have higher performance than those made by rival CATL, sources said.LG Energy Solution’s version uses a cobalt-free cathode and is a pouch type.In its researc

SK Hynix faced problems this month during DRAM production due to the high-k material having a quality issue, TheElec has learned.The zirconium (Zr) high-k material that was supplied by SK Trichem had impurities in them, sources said.This caused some of SK Hynix’s production equipment at its DRAM fab