Powerchip, Taiwan’s biggest D-Ram company, said on Monday it was exiting the commodity PC D-Ram market in favour of making more specialised chips used in mobile computing devices such as tablets and smartphones.
Frank Huang, chairman, said his company would wind down its business of selling PC D-Ram chips under the Powerchip brand. Instead, Powership would become a contract manufacturer of PC D-Ram chips for long-time partner Elpida of Japan, the world’s third biggest D-Ram company. Read more
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, has for the first time laid out its roadmap for moving to bigger silicon discs to drive down chip manufacturing costs.
The world’s biggest chipmaker said on Thursday that it plans to have a trial production line using 18-inch wafers ready by 2013 or 2014. Full production would begin in 2015 or 2016. Read more
Taiwan’s Asus, whose Eee PC introduced the concept of netbooks to the world, has been closely watched over the past year for any signs that tablets were hurting netbook sales.
Asus, however, has said it remain dedicated to netbooks (while also introducing its own tablets and e-readers this year) and vice-president Samson Hu on Wednesday offered a cautiously upbeat prognosis on the future of the mini-notebooks. Read more
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, and Nvidia, the graphics chipmaker, on Thursday announced they have together produced 1 billion GeForce graphics processors. An impressive milestone, but it comes at a time when winds of change are blowing through both the contract chipmaking and the graphics card industry. Read more
For a sign of how quickly touchscreens are gaining in popularity on devices ranging from smartphones and tablets to all-in-one PCs, one need look no further than the recent fortunes of Taiwan’s Wintek, one of the world’s biggest suppliers of touchscreen modules. Read more
Every time a new category of mobile device emerges, network operators have sought to grab a bigger slice of the pie by cutting out branded manufacturers and selling their own-branded gadgets. The first Android-based smartphone, for example, was manufactured by Taiwan’s HTC but was better known as the T-Mobile G1.
It was therefore only a matter of time before this dynamic was extended to tablets. Taiwan’s Vibo Telecom, a 3G operator with 1.8 million subscribers, was among the first to take that step when it launched its 7-inch, Android-based Vibo Vpad this month. Read more
Given how much consumers seem to resent donning a pair of glasses to enjoy 3D content on televisions screens, manufacturers around the world are working hard towards the day when special eyewear is no longer needed.
That day just got closer with Taiwan’s AU Optronics, one of the world’s biggest flat-panel producers, announcing on Wednesday a glasses-less, all-angle viewing 3D panels. Read more
What Acer’s clear.fi does is, unfortunately for their marketing people, not easy to explain clearly. We took a shot at doing so when Acer first announced it in May, and on Friday it was JT Wang, Acer chairman’s turn at the world’s number two PC maker’s third quarter results conference.
Clear.fi, which automatically sets up a local area network between Acer devices, is intended to make it easy for users to access their photos and videos across different Acer products. It is such a big part of Acer’s new push to add software and services to their core hardware offerings that it will be installed on every single device Acer ships starting next year. Read more
Six phone models and 20 months after they joined forces, the smartphone alliance between Asus, the Taiwanese computer maker, and Garmin, the US global positioning device company, is over – at least in its original form.
The two companies on Tuesday announced a new mode of cooperation. Instead of jointly developing Garmin Asus branded phones, Garmin will now only provide its navigation software to Asus, on an exclusive basis for the Android platform. Phones from the Taiwanese company, the world’s fifth-biggest PC maker, will from now on be Asus-branded in front, with a “Garmin Navigation” logo on the back. Read more
By Jane Rickards in Taipei
Samsung Electronics foresees an oversupply of dynamic random access memory (D-Ram) chips in the fourth quarter of this year or the first quarter of next year if the PC market continues to slow, marking the latest twist in a tortuous saga of gluts and shortages. Read more
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Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
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