THT Research - Weekly OEM/ODM Newsletter
May 22, 2006
The Latest News on Global IT Contract Manufacturing from www.THTresearch.com
BRING ON THE ORDERS
HP NB orders
HP is relying on the usual suspects -- Quanta, Compal, Wistron, and Inventec for its NB orders this year. For Inventec, shipments will reach 2.4M NBs, or around 40% of its total output. Nice, but that's a lot of power for one OEM to have over a company... (play nice, HP, play nice).
iPOD $$$
Taiwan and China ODMs stand to make over US$104M worth of iPODS and accessories in 2005, up 37% YoY, according to Global Sources Ltd's recent survey. The lion's share - US$71M - will be made by Taiwan companies (most of it in China, of course).
Dell 20-inch panels
Dell plans to order 20-inch widescreeen panels from AUO, CPT, and LG Philips LCD. Total monthly shipments will exceed 100K units. Other Dell panel suppliers are Samsung, CMO, Hannstar, and SVA-NEC.
HP smartphone
HP's PDA mobile phone for the Asia market is produced by Quanta. HP has launched the iPaq rw6818/6828 in Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand and plans to launch it in China soon.
iPAQ orders
Quanta has received new orders from HP for iPAQ 6800 series smartphones; HTC has orders for the 6900-series iPAQs. Inventec has set up a cellphone unit to try to win some of those orders for itself.
COMPANY NEWS AND INDUSTRY TRENDS
Arima Opto - Nan Ya alliance
LED chipmaker Arima Optoelectronics and Nan Ya Photonics have formed a strategic alliance to share capacity for production of blue LED chips and AlGaInP chips, among other products.
Flip chip substrate capacity
Nanya PCB plans to expand its flip-chip capacity to 30M substrates/month in 2007, 2M more than the current capacity. ASE will also expand its FC substrate capacity - to 3M substrates/month by year-end 2006.
DBTel bad news again
DBTel hasn't been the same since it moved from ODM to own-brand several years back. For the past year in particular it's been in trouble and now the mobile phone maker has announced that it will reduce its shares to improve its financial status. DBTel saw stock losses of NT$430B in the past several years.
Hannstar licenses Honeywell patents
HannStar Display Corp has obtained the right to use Honeywell International patents for its panel production, following the lead of AUO and CMO. The patents relate to panel brightness and reducing interferance.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DISPUTES
Motorola, KBT resolve RAZR disupte
Motorola has reached an agreement with KBT Mobile Co. Ltd (Korea) over its allegations that KBT infringed on its patents, trademarks and design of its RAZR phones. KBT will discontinue manufacturing and sale of its RAZR copies.
M & A
EMC buys Kashya
EMC has bought Kashya (Israel) for US$153M. Kashya develops data replication and protection software for disaster recovery and business continuity. Kashya will continue its Israel operations. Trivia: Kashya means “a problem difficult to solve” in Aramaic, which is the vernacular language spoken in much of the ancient Middle East, including by Jews such as Jesus.
IBM may acquire Spera
IBM is considering acquisition of Israeli start-up Sphera Corporation. Sphera develops software solutions for hosting applications on server farms. IBM is one of Sphera's major customers.
IBM buys Unicorn
IBM is acquiring Unicorn Solutions Inc. (US), along with its Israel R&D center for US$10M.
China Resources to take control of CSMC
China Resources Logic plans to acquire China foundry CSMC Technologies Corp for US$113.5M. China Resources has a 25.9% share of CSMC before the acquisition. CSMC has seen sales and earnings fall in recent years.
ON Semicon buys LSI fab
ON Semiconductor subsidiary Semiconductor Components Industries LLC has bought LSI Logic Corp.'s Oregon fab and other semicon equip for US$105M.
Siemens Communications acquires Photonic Bridges
Siemens Communications is acquiring SDH specialist Photonic Bridges (Shanghai). Phototonic was Siemens' OEM supplier.
Synopsys to acquire Virtio Corp.
Synopsys Inc. is acquiring Virtio Corp., a creator of virtual platforms for embedded software development. Synopsys plans to integrate Virtio's virtual prototyping technology with its System Studio solution.
NEW INNOVATIONS
M-Systems 4-bit/cell/NAND flash innovation
M-Systems has unveiled its new x4 technology, which enables utilization of 4-bit/cell NAND flash. The technology will greatly increase NAND fab profitability by as much as 30% and lead to development of new generations of multimedia consumer electronics devices. Before M-Systems innovation, developing 4-bit/cell NAND flash was considered to be impossible.
SEMICON
TI turns to Chartered
Texas Instruments plans to add Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing as a third foundry for 65nm production in mid-2007. TI also has plans to use UMC for 65nm production and plans to add TSMC in Q306. TI uses SMIC forfinal metallization layers for 130nm production.
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