New switching controller from Linear Technology

The world of OEM and beyond...Gateway M500 Wistron will make Gateway's first wide-screen 15.2 inch NB, equipped with 2.2GHz Pentium 4-M processor and 4GB hard drive. The NB will look a lot like Legend's (China) 1+1 L800 N, also made by Wistron. Wistron ships about 10K units of the M500 to Gateway a month. Gateway usually orders from Quanta, and this is its first order from Wistron. 17M NB sold in 1H03 NB sales are up, with 17M being sold world wide in 1H03 and 36M expected for the year, that's 20% up YoY. Supplies of some key NB components such as cases, hard drives, memory modules, TFT-LCD displays, etc are now tight and component prices are rising. OlympusAsia Optical is an OEM manufacturer for Olympus and can expect to see orders increase as Olympus plans to sell entry level fixed-lens DSCs in order to increase its market share. LG Philips LCD... ...has ordered 1-2K 30-inch LCD TV panels per month from Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO). WLANGemTek, Taiwan's #2 WLAN maker, expects to ship 2.7-2.8M units of WLAN equipment in1H03. In 2002, GemTek shipped 2.5M units and it may ship 6M in 2003. Mini-PCI cards account for 30-40% of its total shipments. ATIATI expects to place orders to Taiwan foundries TSMC and UMC in 3Q03. TSMC makes Radeon 9800 and 9600 using 0.15 and 0.13um tech and UMC makes Radeon 9200 using 0.15um process node. iSightPC camera for MacTaiwan company Ability is to make the PC camera that iSightPC is supplying for Apple's new Power Mac G5, what is expected to be the fastest desktop PC in the world. The camera will have simultaneous voice/video feeds, a Sony CCD, with 640X480 VGA. Ability could earn NT$1B in 2H03 from the orders. PhilipsPhilips is expected certify and order Ritek DVD+RW shortly. Not TSMCOnce again IBM beat TSMC for an order - this time from ADI for medical related embedded DRAM DSP. TSMC explains that this is not its main line of business and the loss is insignficant. What else could it say? Apple NB, Intel MB orders go to... Asustek. With the orders, Asustek expects to ship 2M NB in 2003 and 7M MB. yeah. Taiwan OWNS WLANAccording to the Taiwan government, the country now has 80% world market share in WLAN equipment. WLAN - LinksysLinksys is now part of Cisco even though it still sells products under its own brand name. In 2002, Linksys bought $350M worth of products from Taiwan. That's about NT$12M. In 2003, it will buy NT$15.6B and in NT$24B in 2004. Go Taiwan! TAIWAN @ CHINA Amigo TechnologyADSL modem maker Amigo has received its second ADSL modem order from China, this time from Guangdong Telecom. Its other order was from Nanjing Panda last year. Mobile phone LCDsPicvue of Taiwan received an order for 200K mobile phone color STN LCDs from Guangzhou Soutec (Group) Technology (China). Shipments will begin at the end of June or in early July and will run through September. Amoisonic Electronics (China) also recently ordered 1M CSTN LCDs from Picvue. COMPANY NEWS TSMC IP rights TSMC is suing Syndia Corp in the US for infringement of two patents. TSMC is arguing that two patents that Syndia inherited from a research foundation are invalid. UMC is still hungry UMC is continuing to take over companies in order to solidify its market position. It is now paying $6M for shares of major WLAN player GemTek. UMC subsidiary Archtek Telecom merged with C-Com, a DSL supplier. Powerchip Powerchip plans to build a second 12-inch fab in the end of 2003, investing $2B. The fab will have a capacity of 36K wafers per month when it's finished, in addition to the 15K per month capacity it current fab will soon have. Hon Hai (Foxconn) With orders to supply mobile phone parts to Nokia, Hon Hai (Foxconn) plans to invest $45M in a factory in Hungary to fulfill the orders and ensure efficient supply chain management. Economic Freedom in TaiwanThe conservative thinktank, Heritage Foundation (US), ranks countries on economic freedom every year. Taiwan was ranked 27th out of 160 countries for 2003. Hong Kong and Singapore were #s 1 and 2. CHTChunghwa Telecom will lower prices for its ADSL services by 20% beginning July 1. The 512K/64K-class connection will drop from NT$595 to NT$499 and the 6M-class ADSL fee will be NT$1,399. In March 2003 Taiwan had 2.26M broadband Internet users. See our report on Taiwan's ADSL market for more. Dirty newsMotorola is threatening to cut outsourcing from Taiwan - such as handset orders to BenQ and Compal - if the Taiwan government allows Chinese-brand handsets to be sold in Taiwan. Motorola only sold 1.6M handsets in Taiwan last year (<3% of the market), but for some reason it fears Chinese dumping excess inventories there, which would further erode its Taiwan sales. Even if Motorola carries out its threat, BenQ and Compal should be okay for the rest of the year and could recover with greater sales to China and elsewhere. But that's not the point -- the point is bullying that reminds us of a certain giant software company in Seattle. DRAM anyone? Get it now! Taiwan's DRAM makers expect DRAM contract prices to rise in 2H03 by up to 15%.256MB DRAM will hit $4-4.50 per DRAM die. Dell and HP are stocking up on DRAM now - maybe it's time you did too? SOLD!! TO TAIWAN.. Hantro Hantro (Finland) has sold its CamCorder technology to Quanta to use to develop its high-end handset business. Quanta is expected to ship at least 5M andsets this year, but likely more given its recent GPRS orders from T-mobile and new orders for Panasonic's GF70. Qualcomm Qualcomm has agreed to transfer LSI Logic's cdmaOne and CDMA2000 1X ASIC license to VIA Telecom. The license allows VIA Telecom to develop, manufacture and sells the ASIC's to Qualcomm subscriber equipment licensees. The agreement will help VIA expand in the CDMA market. NEW PRODUCTS: SiSSiS has launched its SIS655FX chipset. The chipset supports FSB800MHz and DDR400 dual channel and provides 6.4GB/s data transaction rate. It competes with Via's PT880 chipset which will be out 3Q03. SIS also plans to release a Home Media Station - TR-2000 - together with FIC and NUMA Technology in August. BenQ handsetsBenQ will launch two new own-brand handsets next week. Model 650D will be mid-priced, clamshell style with dual screen design. M550G will be for the low-end market. BenQ markets own brand handsets only in Taiwan, where it expects to sell 400K units this year. Look for BenQ's smartphone, the Symbian-powered P30, in 2H03. TV Tuner CardMSI has introduced a TV tuner card called TV@nywhere Master (they must have used the same pr agency as BenQ to come up with this "brilliant" product name...). The card uses Microtune's tuner chip and Conexant's audio/video decoding processor. Check out their website for the specs.