Foxconn called off the joint venture plan with India's Vedanta Group without disclosing the reason. Interestingly, market rumors are now saying that Foxconn is discussing with TSMC and Japan's TMH Group for possible foundry cooperations.
Huawei's operating pressure mainly comes from the weak consumer electronics market recovery as well as overseas sanctions, especially in Europe and the United States. Huawei's revenue has declined, especially the consumer end product business, by 12% in 2022, seriously affecting its cash inflow. Therefore, Huawei has strived to crack technical barriers, invested in independent R&D and patent layout, and is now using its 5G and 6G intellectual properties to overcome constraints.
TSMC founder Morris Chang on July 4 delivered a keynote speech titled "Redefining Globalization," presenting his views on the current geopolitics and posing a question to the audience, "Can this still be considered globalization?"
Following the previous announcement of the 10-year semiconductor industry development plan by former South Korean President Moon Jae-in, in May 2023, the Ministry of Science and ICT of South Korea released a 10-year R&D roadmap. The former plan focuses on the current development direction of the industry, especially system chips, with IC design companies and foundries being the two most important components. The plan is clearly inspired by Taiwan's example, indicating a desire to compete with Taiwan in this field.
The Chinese government has recently announced without prior warning that it will control exports of gallium and germanium metals. The announcement has received extensive media coverage, with particular emphasis on touting it as China's counterattack against various restrictions by the US, Japan and Europe on its semiconductor industry.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd (TSMC) founder Morris Chang is again in the limelight, lamenting the "death of globalization." In a keynote speech at the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce, Taiwan (CNAIC) on July 4, Chang said "national security" has become the top priority of some countries, redefining globalization to suit their individual self-interests.
On the evening of July 3, China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and General Administration of Customs (GAC) announced export control measures on gallium- and germanium-related semiconductor raw materials.
Intel held the Intel Internal Foundry Model Investor Webinar on June 21 to explain the shift to a new internal foundry model, where internal product departments and manufacturing departments move to a foundry-like relationship. Industry experts expect TSMC to benefit from Intel's decision.
Qualcomm promoted the concept of "hybrid AI" at COMPUTEX 2023, emphasizing that both machine learning and generative AI require the joint cooperation of edge and cloud AI to realize various AI applications with the best operational efficiency.
Micron Technology, the American memory company, has been banned from China for allegedly failing to pass a security audit, and the operational impact and market share shift effects are still reverberating. Just as the world is concerned about whether US officials will offer tougher countermeasures, Micron announced that it will invest more than CNY 4.3 billion (US$602 million) in its Xi'an packaging and testing plant, including the acquisition of Powertech's Xi'an plant.
The June 18 sales promotion ("618 shopping festival") in China kicked off on Sunday, and smartphone and well as car vendors offered discounts to consumers. Although the price competition is fierce, it still pushes down the chip inventory level of components, channel vendors, and system houses slightly.
As geopolitical competition and the concept of national security gain a technological dimension, fueled by US-China rivalry and the post-pandemic supply chain disruption, semiconductors, which underpin the technology industry, have particularly been weaponized. Amid talks of "de-risking", "de-coupling", "autonomy" and "regionalization," few remember the virtue of neutrality that laid the groundwork of the burgeoning global semiconductor industry.
As the market enters the second half of the second quarter, after a year-long chaotic period, both the inventory de-stocking and the subsequent stock replenishment will end in the near future. Inventory may not be the main determinant of IC shipment performance in the second half of the year. Terminal demand and upstream shipment may appear to be decoupled.
The year 2023 stands as a pivotal moment in Extended Reality (XR). If historians were to select a period to study this chapter of spatial computing history, they would likely focus on a crucial ten-day span that has recently transpired:
ChatGPT, the chatbot that uses the GPT language model developed by OpenAI, has become the fastest-growing consumer application in history, according to a UBS study. Since its release in 2020, GPT-3 has been praised for its ability to generate human-like text. These factors, along with ChatGPT's impressively two-month surge to achieve 100M users, make it an excellent case study for technology productization.
