Key Foundry said on Tuesday that it will offer its third-generation 0.18 micrometer Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) process to customers.BCD process combines bipolar process that controls analog signals, CMOS to control digital signals and DMOS for high power processing, into one chip.It is mainly used to p

South Korean telecom component maker RFHIC is expecting its highest annual sales on record in 2021.The company’s gallium nitride (GaN) power amplifiers are being supplied to Samsung Electronics’ network business. Samsung Network is planning to supply wireless equipment with GaN power amplifiers to U

The combined sales of the top five semiconductor foundries in the world will increase 10% in 2021 from a year prior, VLSIresearch president Risto Puhakka said on Thursday.TSMC, Samsung Foundry, SMIC, GlobalFounderies and UMC combined will record US$80 billion in sales this year, the president said a

Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf said Thursday that he expects the shortage in foundry production capacity will continue up to the first half of 2021.The CEO told Reuters that the company sell more chips if it could produce more.Qualcomm reported the earnings for its fiscal first quarter (October to De

Samsung Electronics said on Thursday that it plans to expand the application of magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM).MRAM stores data in magnetic domains, unlike most RAMs that store them in electric charge or current flows.The company improved the magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) function of its MRAM to make

Wafer fab equipment spending is expected to exceed US$70 billion in 2022, hitting an all time high from high demand for semiconductors, SEMI director Clark Tseng said.The fab equipment spending will reach US$66 billion this year, double that of US$30 billion in 2012.Spending will increase in wafer f

Yes Power Technix said on Thursday that it has received 26.8 billion won in funding from SK Holdings, the holding company of SK Group.SK Group will gain a 33.6% take in Yes Power Technix through the deal.Yes Power Technix, an affiliate of YEST, is the only company in South Korea that can design and

Samsung Electronics said on Thursday that, for the entire year of 2020, it has posted 236.81 trillion won in sales and 35.99 trillion won in operating profit.This is a rise of 2.78% and 29.62%, respectively, from 2019.The figure matches the market consensus of South Korean analysts of sales of 235.7

Samsung Electronics is estimating that it will ship around 26 million units of its Galaxy S21 smartphone series this year, TheElec has learned.The figure is conservative as its Galaxy S20 series sold that much in 2020, which was considered underwhelming by the company.Samsung set the conservative fi

Hanmi Semiconductor vice chairman Kwak Dong-shin said on Wednesday that the company was aiming for sales of 308 billion won in 2021.This is 20% higher than its sales of 255.7 billion won in 2020, which was its highest ever.The vice chairman said the year 2021 will be when the company makes a great l

Two factories of UMC in Taiwan had suffered a power outage lasting five to six hours, according to state-owned Taiwan’s Central News Agency on Sunday.The company said the outage may negatively effect 8-inch wafer production and operations. UMC is the fourth largest foundry in the world. The outage s

System semiconductor design company Coasia and design service firm Hanatec on Wednesday signed a technology and personnel sharing agreement to win global orders together.Both companies are official design solution partners of Samsung Electronics’ Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE) alliance.Th

The worldwide smartphone shipment will increase 9% in 2021 to 1.36 billion units, according to TrendForce.Shipment in 2020 had contracted 11% from the previous year to 1.25 billion units due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the research firm said. The top shippers, in order, were Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Xi

The South Korea government is expecting semiconductor export to surpass US$100 billion in 2021.The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said on Tuesday that export is estimated to increase 10.2% this year to US$109.3 billion from last year’s US$99.2 billion.This will be the second highest ever fig

Samsung Electronics said on Monday that vice chairman Lee Jae-yong visited the company’s Pyeongtaek semiconductor plant.According to Samsung, Lee told executives and employees that they must collaborate with partners, academia and research institutes to build a healthy ecosystem to make history in s

A shortage in production capacity compared to demand in semiconductors is expected to increase their prices in 2021. Some companies have already notified their customers of the price hike.TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip maker, recently scrapped its price cut policy (up to 3%) for major custo

Global foundry sales in 2021 will grow 6% from 2020 to US$89.6 billion, market research firm TrendForce said.Notebook, TV and other electronics devices and 5G will lead this growth it said.The foundry market is 2020 is expected to grow 23.7% from a year ago to be worth US$84.6 billion. This is thank

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet that he had contacted Apple CEO Tim Cook to discuss potentially selling Tesla but Cook refused the meeting. The tweet was made after it was reported that Apple is planning to launch an autonomous car of its own with electric vehicle batter. So far, Apple has refus

South Korean chip maker DB HiTek has decided to increase the price of semiconductor contract production, or foundry, by up to 20%, TheElec has learned.The company decided to increase the price due to high demand for foundry services globally, people familiar with the matter said. DB HiTek has also s

US Department of Commerce has added Chinese foundry SMIC in its list of sanctioned companies that will have their access to US technology blocked.SMIC was among 77 companies, 60 of them Chinese, added to Entity List. The addition was due to China’s military-civil fusion (MCF) doctrine and evidence o