IF / News

Foxconn forecasts that a global chip shortage would run into 2H22 and its 4Q21 revenue for electronics, including smartphones, would fall more than 15%. (Apple Insider, Reuters, Sina, WSJ)

In response to the attention-grabbing FinFET advanced technology of 14nm and below, SMIC’s co-CEO Haijun Zhao has said that the effect of customer expansion and diversified product storage has further manifested. Some FinFET tape-out projects have entered mass production one after another, and the capacity utilization rate has continued to increase. According to SMIC’s report, advanced technology including FinFET and 28nm technology accounted for 18.2% of revenue in 3Q21. (CN Beta, My Drivers, Sohu, Verdict)

Fifteen companies including ARM, Sentry, Knóldus, Spectral, Automata, Activision and Toyota have joined the foundation to support the development of the Rust programming language. The Rust programming language makes it possible for developers to build safe and sustainable software. The Rust Foundation creates a platform for companies that benefit from Rust’s value. (CN Beta, Rust Foundation)

MediaTek CEO Rick Tsai has said that MediaTek is already the world’s largest smartphone SoC manufacturer and is continuing to maintain its growth momentum around the world. Not only in the Chinese market, MediaTek has said that in the North American Android market, its chip share will exceed 35% by the end of 2021. He has said that the global 5G penetration rate will reach 35%-40% in 2021, and it will reach 50% in 2022. (My Drivers, EET-China, TechNews)

Reliance Jio has joined hands with MediaTek to launch ‘Gaming Masters 2.0’, an e-sports event with one of the most popular game titles, Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), targeted at new and existing online gaming enthusiasts and the professional gamers in India. Gaming Masters is a grassroot e-sports gaming initiative by Jio and MediaTek to revolutionize online gaming in India. (Gizmo China, Jio Games, Live-Mint, IndiaTimes)

EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has said that the United States and the European Union must avoid a subsidy race as they rush to support semiconductor production amid a global chip shortage. She has said that European Union would need to invest up to EUR330B (USD378B) upfront to fully supply its own chip demands. (CN Beta, Laoyaoba, The Hindu, Reuters, Bloomberg)

T-Mobile’s Un-carrier is the exclusive 5G launch partner in North America for Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform. In addition, via the T-Mobile Accelerator, the Un-carrier will work directly with startups and developers using Snapdragon Spaces to build immersive 5G experiences for AR glasses across gaming, entertainment and other industries starting in spring 2022. (Phone Arena, T-Mobile)

Cerebras Systems, the pioneer in accelerating artificial intelligence (AI) compute, today announced it has raised USD250M in a Series F financing round, valuing the company at over USD4B. To-date, the company has raised USD720M. Cebebras is building whole computer systems and services wrapped around a set of components based on the world’s biggest chip, what Cerebras calls its Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE). The company has unveiled the second version of the WSE, packing 2.6T transistors onto a surface taking up almost the entirety of a 12” semiconductor wafer. (Laoyaoba, AnandTech, Reuters, ZDNet, Business Wire)

Samsung will utilize Qualcomm, Exynos, MediaTek, and UNISOC SoCs for its phones and tablets in 2022. Samsung is planning to launch more than 60 devices in 2022. Around 31 of these phones/tablets will reportedly feature Qualcomm Snapdragon 898.  Meanwhile, Exynos 2200 with the integrated AMD GPU will run on 20 devices in 2022. Lastly, 14 devices will pack MediaTek SoCs, and 3 will use chipsets made by UNISOC. (The Elec, Android Headlines)

IBM claims it has taken a major step toward practical quantum computation unveiling Eagle, a 127 qubit quantum processor. Eagle is based upon our heavy-hexagonal qubit layout as debuted with our Falcon processor, where qubits connect with either two or three neighbors as if sitting upon the edges and corners of tessellated hexagons. IBM has said Eagle will be the first step beyond IBM’s current Quantum System One. They will preview the aptly named IBM Quantum System Two, which will feature an emphasis on modularity. (CN Beta, Engadget, ZDNet, Reuters, Tom’s Hardware, Quantum Daily, IBM)

Nvidia has launched Modulus, a framework for developing “physics-grounded” machine learning models in industries that require a high level of physical accuracy. Modulus trains AI systems to use the laws of physics to model the behavior of systems in a range of fields, according to Nvidia, including climate science and protein engineering. (EE Focus, VentureBeat, Nvidia, 36Kr)

Royole has signed a large order contract totaling CNY600M. According to the agreement, Royole will provide customers with self-developed flexible OLED display modules. Shipments will begin in 2022, and all orders will be delivered within 2 years. The flexible screen OLED display module provided by Royole Technology uses Royole’s original ultra-low temperature non-silicon process integration technology (ULT-NSSP) and is manufactured by Royole International Flexible Display Base in Longgang, Shenzhen. (Laoyaoba, Sohu, Xinhuanet, LEDInside, Airvers)

UL and Seoul Semiconductor have signed a framework agreement for strategic cooperation in three lighting technology fields: SunLike, UV-UV LED and plant lighting, and issued the world’s first UL market claim verification certificate for lighting light quality to Seoul Semiconductor SunLike Technology. Seoul Semiconductor has more than 14,000 patents. Its innovation technologies include: SunLike technology that simulates the natural spectrum, unpackaged LED (WICOP), “Acrich” that can be driven by AC and DC, which is developed and successfully mass-produced, and the patented high-voltage LED “MJT multi-junction chip technology”, And “nPola” which is 10 times brighter than traditional LED and UV sterilization technology “violeds”, etc. (Laoyaoba, PRNewswire)

DSCC has confirmed with its supply chain sources that Google has decided not to bring the Pixel Fold to market. In terms of hardware, the Pixel Fold was expected to be the same size as the Galaxy Z Fold 3 with LTPO and variable refresh up to 120Hz. (GizChina, Twitter, DSCC)

OPPO’s foldable smartphone is allegedly codenamed “Peacock” will be launched in Dec 2021. The company has another high-end device codenamed “Butterfly” which is scheduled to launch in 2022. OPPO’s foldable smartphone will reportedly feature a low-temperature polycrystalline oxide (LTPO) display.  (Weibo, Gizmo China)

According to TrendForce, benefiting from the recovery of smartphone shipments, the proportion of three lenses used in the rear cameras of mobile phones has increased. It is estimated that the shipment of mobile phone lens modules will be 4.844B units in 2021, an annual increase of 6%. It is estimated that smartphone shipments will increase by 3.3% annually in 2022, and the penetration rate of the rear tri-cam will continue to grow, and the shipments of mobile phone lens modules will increase by 3% annually. (Laoyaoba, Sohu)

Israeli startup TriEye has raised USD74M to commercialize a type of sensing technology that can be used to help autonomous and driver assistance systems to see better in adverse conditions. The technology uses short-wave infrared (SWIR), which refers to a wavelength range that is outside the visible spectrum. Using SWIR and a proprietary illumination source also developed by TriEye, the company has built a sensor it calls sedar (spectrum enhanced detection and ranging).  (TechCrunch, CN Beta, Times of Israel)

Leica and Xiaomi may have struck a deal for the upcoming Xiaomi 12 lineup. A leak indicates that the Xiaomi 12 Ultra may feature Leica optimized cameras. The phone will be sporting three 50MP cameras. One of them could be a 1/1.5-inch periscope zoom lens with 5x optical zoom support. (Gizmo China, Twitter, CN Beta)

Apple is allegedly thinking about how to use Touch ID on the iPhone 14. The most likely solution is the fingerprint on display solution. (GizChina, My Drivers, T3, iDropnews)

SK Hynix has confirmed the development of a new 24GB HBM3 memory with an immensely high bandwidth performance of 819GB/s per stack. SK Hynix has officially released the details of their next-gen memory modules. SK Hynix has published specifications from their initial tests, showing speeds of 5.2Gbps to 6.4Gbps. This module features a total of 12 stacks with each connected to a 1024-bit interface.  (CN Beta, My Drivers, WCCFTech, Tom’s Hardware)

DRAM prices soared 41% through the first eight months of 2021, rising from USD3.37 in Jan to USD4.77 in Aug. DRAM ASP in Sept slipped 3% to USD4.62, which still was a 37% increase from the beginning of the year.  Such a strong price increase and market rebound were expected in 2020 following a very difficult year in 2019 when the DRAM average selling price (ASP) fell 44%. IC Insights projects global shipments of new-generation 5G smartphones will grow to 575M units in 2021. (Laoyaoba, IC Insights)

Samsung Electronics has discontinued DDR2 memory, and is on track to stop making DDR3 chips within the next 2 years, according to Digitimes. As the largest supplier of 4Gb DDR3 memory, Samsung Electronics has decided to stop investing in the production capacity of low-density DRAM memory and put more energy on the production of the more profitable CIS. Under this circumstance, DDR3 prices are expected to have limited room to fall. (Laoyaoba, IT Home, UDN, Digitimes)

Toshiba Corporation has announced it will be splitting itself up into 3 standalone companies — Infrastructure Service Co, Device Co, and Toshiba, in hopes that will help deliver sustainable profit growth as well as enhance shareholder value and trust. As for Toshiba, it will hold shares in Kioxia Holdings Corporation (KHC) and Toshiba Tec Corporation. As part of the separation, Toshiba will convert the shares of KHC into cash. (GizChina, ZDNet, Toshiba, IT Home, Sohu)

A smartphone with 150W fast charging is reportedly on its way, which will enter mass production soon. Presently, the smartphone industry has 120W fast charging which can deliver a full charge in only 15 mins for 4200-4500mAh battery. (Android Authority, Weibo, GizChina)

CATL has formed a regional subsidiary in South Korea. CATL is likely setting up the subsidiary in South Korea, home to rivals LG Energy Solution, SK Innovation and Samsung SDI, to provide support in lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery technology to customer Hyundai Motor. CATL is also planning to market its energy storage system (ESS) in South Korea. (CN Beta, The Elec)

Samsung Electronics Australia has announced that it collaborated with TPG Telecom and has completed its first 5G virtualized RAN (vRAN) trial on 26GHz frequency. This operation will now further enable Samsung Networks and TPG to provide their customers “access to competitive connection speeds for 5G”. (Neowin, Samsung)

T-Mobile has announced that its “Ultra Capacity” 5G network now covers over 200M people in the US, a goal the company had previously set to reach before the end of 2021. T-Mobile uses its “Ultra Capacity” 5G label for its mid-band and mmWave networks, both of which offer much faster speeds than its low-band “5G Extended Range” network. (CN Beta, Apple Insider, The Verge)

Huawei, Haier, and China Mobile have unveiled some techniques they have deployed in smart factories to boost manufacturing production. The new innovations developed by the Chinese firms are threefold and were developed at their newly established joint-innovation base. The first innovation involves the use of machine vision to perform quality checks. The second technique that the partners developed is in AI-surveillance. Finally, 5G is being used to operate HD cameras, 5G gateways, and smart industrial terminals that work together with the aid of artificial intelligence. (Neowin, CN Beta)

Samsung is reportedly planning to produce at least 10M units of the Galaxy Z Fold4 and the Z Flip4 in 3Q22 / 4Q22. The company intends to produce up to 38 M Galaxy S22 series smartphones in 2022. Samsung also has up to 9M units of Galaxy S21 FE reportedly going into production ahead of its release in Jan 2022. Meanwhile, the company wants to produce up to 78M units of mid-range phones like the Galaxy A13, A33 5G, and the A53 5G. In total, about 334M Samsung smartphones are expected to ship in 2022. (Android Headlines, The Elec, CN Beta, GizChina)

Google’s Material Components library titled “Add supporting manufacturer list of dynamic colors” includes a list of OEMs that will support dynamic system themes. The list currently comprises OPPO, realme, OnePlus, vivo, Xiaomi, Motorola, itel, Tecno Mobile, Infinix, HMD Global, Sharp, Sony, TCL, Lenovo, Google, and Roboelectric. (Gizmo China, XDA-Developers, Twitter)

U.S. President Joe Biden has signed legislation to prevent companies like Huawei Technologies or ZTE Corp that are deemed security threats from receiving new equipment licenses from U.S. regulators. These sanctions are enforced under the Secure Equipment Act. The bill is passed by the U.S. Senate on a 420-4 vote and required President Biden to sign it.  (Android Headlines, Reuters, BBC)

Huawei is allegedly considering licensing its designs to a unit of state-owned China Postal and Telecommunications Appliances Co (PTAC). The unit, known as Xnova, is already selling Huawei-branded Nova phones on its e-commerce site and the partnership will see it offer self-branded devices based on the larger company’s designs.  Chinese telecom equipment maker TD Tech will also allegedly sell some phones featuring Huawei’s designs under its own brand. The partnerships are subject to change as negotiations are still ongoing. (GizChina, Bloomberg, Yahoo, SlashDot, Bloomberg Quint, IT Home)

Samsung Galaxy A03 Core is announced – 6.5” HD+ v-notch TFT, Unisoc SC9863A, rear 8MP + front 5MP, 2+32GB, no fingerprint scanner, 5000mAh, Android 11.0 Go, price yet to be announced. (GSM Arena, Samsung)

vivo Y15A is launched in Philippines – 6.51” 720×1600 HD+ v-notch IPS, MediaTek Helio P35, rear dual 13MP-2MP depth + front 8MP, 4+64GB, Android 11.0, microUSB 2.0, side fingerprint, 5000mAh 10W, 5W reverse charging, PHP7,999 (USD159). (GSM Arena, vivo, Gizmo China)

Infinix Note 11i and Hot 11 Play are launched in Ghana:        Note 11i – 6.95” 1080×2460 FHD+ HiD IPS, MediaTek Helio G85, rear tri 48MP-2MP macro-2MP depth + front 16MP, 4+64GB, Android 11.0, side fingerprint, 5000mAh 18W, GHC979 (USD160). Hot 11 Play – 6.82” 720×1640 HD+ v-notch IPS, MediaTek Helio G35, rear dual 13MP-AI lens + front 8MP, 4+128GB, Android 11.0, rear fingerprint, 6000mAh 10W, GHC799 (USD130).  (GSM Arena, Infinix, Infinix, Gizmo China)

OPPO A95 is official in Malaysia – 6.43” 1080×2400 FHD+ HiD AMOLED, Qualcomm Snapdragon 662, rear tri 48MP-2MP macro-2MP depth + front 16MP, 8+128GB, Android 11.0, fingerprint on display, 5000mAh 33W, MYR1,099 (USD264).  (GSM Arena, OPPO, CN Beta)

Seoul says it will be the first major city government to enter the metaverse. On 3 Nov 2021, he South Korean capital announced a plan to make a variety of public services and cultural events available in the metaverse, an immersive internet that relies on virtual reality. The KRW3.9B (USD3.3M) investment is part of mayor Oh Se-hoon’s 10-year plan for the city, which aims to improve social mobility among citizens and raising the city’s global competitiveness. (CN Beta, Quartz, Seoul.gov)

South Korea has begun testing a new system that will be used in controlling urban air mobility vehicles (UAM). These tests will determine whether the new mode of transport will be used for travel between major airports as soon as 2025. (Gizmo China, Reuters, Sina, CN Beta)

China’s navigation giant, NavInfo, has announced that the company’s recent V2X (vehicle to everything) deal with Volvo Cars. In the following 3 years, NavInfo will be performing compliance services for V2X platforms on all Volvo cars within the country. In the meantime, NavInfo is also cooperating with major automakers like Daimler, Ford, Volkswagen, GAC Group, Great Wall Motor, and NIO. (Laoyaoba, Gasgoo, Yicai Global)

In data from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, Apple has increased the number of self-driving cars driver permits by 23, bringing the total number of its drivers up to 137. In Sept 2021, the count was at 114, while in Aug and May, it was 92 drivers and 76 drivers respectively. (Apple Insider, Mac Reports)

Volvo Cars CFO Bjorn Annwall has unveiled another European plant by 2025 to reach its annual production target of 1.2M units. The company is already able to produce 800K vehicles a year at its 2 existing plants in Sweden and Belgium. (CN Beta, Sohu, The Levant)

Changan Auto’s AVATR Technology launched its subsidiary brand officially, AVATR, as the automaker’s high-end EV line and unveiled the brand’s first EV model, the AVATR 11. It is powered by the Huawei Inside intelligent solution, with a 400 TOPS computing power. The car allows over 200 KW of supercharging, with at least 700 km of NEDC range. Huawei will provide comprehensive technical support for Avatar Technology.  (CN Beta, Gasgoo, Pandaily, QQ)

Facebook has announced that it is rolling out new shopping features: Shops in Groups, product recommendations and a test of Live Shopping for Creators. Shops in Groups enables admins of Facebook groups to set up an online store on their associated Facebook Page. It is up to the admins where this money goes — in the case of OctoNation, a page that tested the feature, the profits went to OctoNation’s nonprofit that educates people about octopuses. (CN Beta, TechCrunch, Facebook)

Philippines-based Plentina, a buy now, pay later startup focused on emerging markets, has announced that it has raised USD2.2M. This brings the fintech’s total funding since it was founded in 2019, including a seed round announced in Apr 2021, to USD5.7M. The new capital will be used to speed-track Plentina’s growth in the Philippines, expand its product and start exploring launches in other countries, including Vietnam.  (TechCrunch, California News Times)