IF / News

Chipsets

Japanese semiconductor industry is dying, yet some parts still perform well, for instance Sony’s CMOS, Tokyo Electron, and Renesas Electronics’ pushing organization, and Softbank that acquires ARM. (Laoyaoba, Digitimes)

Touch Display

Huawei has applied for a trademark dubbed as “Huawei 4D touch”. The ‘Huawei 4D touch’ trademark application is dated 9 Jun 2017 and goes with application number 2017060618. The trademark is filed at the Malaysia –MyIPO office, and is under the ‘Application filed’ status right now. (Laoyaoba, Android Headlines, Android Soul)

Memory

DRAM and Flash vendor Winbond’s chairman Zhan Dongyi indicates the company will become a “smart memory” company, focusing to integrate more functions into memory to improve the system. (Laoyaoba, UDN)

Camera

Because of Xiaomi’s Redmi Pro infringing dual-camera patent, Altek is suing JD.com and O-Film. The patent illustrates a camera module, its optical axie can be adjusted to provide different photography effects. As this dual camera module is manufactured by O-Film, and JD.com is selling the handset, thus Xiaomi is not being sued. (Laoyaoba, IT Home, Sohu)

Connectivity

The big 3 operators in China expects to invest USD180B in 5G infrastructure construction, more than what they have spent on 4G in 2013~2020, which is USD117B. This also exceeds what Japan has spent, in the same time period, Japan expects to spend USD46B to build the 5G infrastructure. (UDN, Laoyaoba)

Suzhou Mobile has held a field trial for China Mobile, and plans to initiate 7-10 trial points for 5G test in 2H17. Other than Suzhou, China Mobile has confirmed on May 2017 that it will begin 5G field test in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Ningbo. (Laoyaoba, JRJ, Sina, Tencent)

Murata Manufacturing acquired Parma-based ID-Solutions, an Italian RFID system integrator providing added value traceability solutions. ID-Solutions is a spin-off company of the University of Parma, a charter technology partner of RFID Lab Parma and specializes in providing RFID solutions for supply chains with a focus on the retail, food, and healthcare industries. (Laoyaoba, Murata, Evertiq)

Smartphones

Based on the May survey conducted by Loup Ventures of 501 U.S. consumers, 25% of the 220 current iPhone users surveyed said they plan on buying Apple’snext iPhone when it is released. That is up from the 23% that answered affirmatively in the same survey back in Mar 2017. More significantly, that is 10% higher than the 15% of iPhone owners that said they wanted to buy the iPhone 7 in Jul 2016 prior to its release Sept 2016.  (The Street, Laoyaoba, Benzinga)

Cowen & Co.’s Timothy Arcuri suggests Apple’s total iPhone supply for 2Q17 remains unchanged at about 43M units. They model sell-in of  about 41.5M (up slightly YoY) and sell-through could be flat to just down slightly even considering the huge about 4M unit channel inventory draw-down in 2Q17. iPhone ASP should also be fine as they now see something in the ~USD590 range (roughly flat YoY).  (Digital Trends, Apple Insider, Barron’s, blog, Pocket Now, Laoyaoba)

Verizon launches flip phone LG Exalt LTE – 3” 400×240 display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 21x processor, 5MP rear camera, 1470mAh battery, USD168. (My Drivers, CNET, The Verge)

Internet of Things

Global shipments of OLED TVs in 2017 are expected to more than double from a year earlier to reach 2M units, according to Digitimes. (Digitimes, press)