1. Apple and the Yangtze River Storage is being negotiated to adopt its flash memory chips;
According to Nikkei News, Apple is negotiating with the Chinese government-backed Yangtze Storage Technologies Corp. to buy its NAND flash memory chips, marking the first time that the U.S. giant has purchased memory from Chinese memory chip makers Chip, a move that will greatly promote the development of China's storage industry.
If the two sides finally reach an agreement, which means that Apple will purchase memory chips for the first time from Chinese manufacturers, this is undoubtedly a big gain for the storage of the Yangtze River.Although the initial orders may not be large, but can win big customers like Apple, For an established business is not easy.For China, the deal with Apple will help reduce the dependence on imported chips, government agencies in the semiconductor field has shown a willingness to invest heavily.
Whether Apple is under pressure to buy chips from Chinese manufacturers is unclear, after all, China has realized that it should exert pressure on foreign technology companies that want to enter the Chinese market.According to an industry executive, it is certain that, Transactions with Chinese companies will help Apple's expansion in this market.
It is reported that the first production line of Yangtze River Storage is located in Wuhan City, an investment of 24 billion US dollars, with the world's three single-seat clean area of the largest 3D NAND Flash production plant, the current production and Power plant has been capped in September 2017. Later this year, the Yangtze River storage will be officially mass-produced NAND flash memory chips.
As a result, even if the two sides reach an agreement, the earliest will not be able to supply until 2019. According to insiders, the Yangtze River storage may not be able to mass-produce according to the requirements of Apple after 2020. Two insiders said that Apple will put these Chip for the new iPhone, especially some other products sold in China's domestic market.
Currently, Apple buys NAND flash memory chips for the iPhone mainly from Toshiba in Japan, Western Digital in the US, SK Hynix in South Korea and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. According to Sean Yang, an analyst at CINNO in Shanghai, Apple is a global player The largest NAND flash memory chip customer, total demand in 2017 reached 160 million gigabytes, accounting for 15% of global demand.
For example, the iPhone X has 64G and 256G versions, with prices in China being Rmb8,388 and Rmb9,688, respectively.
Sean Yang said that supplying Apple to the U.S. giant will help manufacturers improve product quality in the sense that Apple will only use components that meet its high standards and will also help increase its mass production capacity Its rapid growth as an international player in the market.
Changjiang Storage was formally established on the basis of Wuhan Xinxin Integrated Circuit Manufacturing Co., Ltd. on July 26, 2016. The major shareholders of the Company include China IC Industry Investment Fund, Ziguang Group and Hubei Government, and is currently a subsidiary of Tsinghua Unisplendour Group The company is seen as China's hope of catching up and challenging market leaders such as Samsung Electronics, Toshiba, SK Hynix, Micron and Intel in the storage space, with several market leaders monopolizing the global NAND flash memory market for 2017. "
According to the Nikkei Asia Review and other local media reports, Tsinghua University and CKI had tried to license NAND flash memory technology with foreign counterparts such as Micron, SK Hynix and Intel, but there was no major breakthrough in the negotiations.
Violet has denied having talked with Micron and SK Hynix but declined to comment on whether it would seek to work with Intel Corp. In 2014, the chip giant in the United States invested $ 1.5 billion in a controlling stake in Ziguang Share ratio up to 20%.
Intel said in a statement that it has had a solid relationship with Violet for many years, but the terms of the relationship are kept confidential and the company declined to comment on whether it would license its 3D NAND flash memory to the Chinese conglomerate.
Apple and the Yangtze River Storage Technology did not immediately respond to the request for comment.
China is making unrelenting efforts to build a competitive semiconductor industry, and the central and local governments have all poured huge sums of money in seeking overseas acquisition opportunities, but taking into account the issue of national security, China is facing many overseas countries in this field and Restrictions in the region include a ban on Chinese acquisitions, the blocking of Chinese enterprises from entering overseas markets and the purchase of advanced technologies.
In 2015, government-backed Ziguang Group, which had been trying to acquire Micron for $ 23 billion, was rejected by the U.S. government on the grounds of national security that the Chinese group later ceased its bid of $ 3.8 billion at the 2016 review of the U.S. authorities After the investment, becoming the largest shareholder of Western Digital.
For Apple, it needs to strike a balance between the United States and China, which is one of its major markets and the most important manufacturing base, and Apple must also secure its own memory chip supply chain. In 2017, The company joins a consortium led by Bain Capital, a US private equity firm, for 2 trillion yen ($ 17.7 billion) to invest in Toshiba's NAND flash memory chip manufacturing division.
According to NAR's 2012 Apple Vendor Vendor Data, the number of Apple suppliers in China has more than doubled in 2017 to 19 in 2012 compared with seven in 2012.
In addition, China was already Apple's third-largest market during October-December last year, accounting for nearly 20% of its revenue of 88.29 billion U.S. dollars, second only to the United States and Europe.
Apple CEO Tim Cook apparently has taken the Chinese market a top priority, having made 12 trips to China since taking the helm in 2011. In 2017 alone, he runs in March, October and December China hopes to strengthen its ties with its local partners and government agencies.
In July last year, Apple removed several VPN services from the Chinese version of the App Store that could help Chinese users bypass the firewall, a move that severely restricted Chinese Internet users from accessing foreign websites and, at the request of the Chinese authorities, The New York Times application was unveiled by the end of 2016 and many see the move as a censorship.
In December last year, Cook answered a question about removing VPNs from the China App Store at a Wealth Forum in Guangzhou, China: "When you enter a country and participate in a market, you need to comply with the country's laws and regulations."
'With the passage of time, my hope is that some services will come back, and I'm hopeful and optimistic about that,' he added.
On the other hand, Apple also said it will invest 350 billion U.S. dollars to help the U.S. economy grow and create 20,000 jobs in five years. During his election campaign, President Trump once questioned Apple's dependence on the global supply chain rather than on The United States produces products domestically, which has led to a decline in domestic manufacturing and the loss of jobs for Americans.
Since Trump came to power, Apple has invested $ 390 million in Finisar, a laser component supplier, in research and development and helped create more than 500 local jobs.
2. One year earlier! China Mobile will launch 5G service in 2019;
Set micro-grid February 14 comprehensive report
5G has become the industry chain, the common expectations, and have the core technology and voice of the manufacturers are also stepping up promotion.
Recently, it is reported that China Mobile plans to provide consumers with comprehensive 5G services by the end of 2019, a year earlier than originally scheduled for 2020.
It is reported that China Mobile adopted the "layered packet network (SPN) technology," which will help operators manage the network architecture, bandwidth, traffic, latency and time synchronization, making it possible to advance the popularity of 5G services. Layer-by-packet network (SPN) technology, considered a key technology for 5G networks, will allow operators to efficiently segment portions of the network in specific applications.
China Mobile said the combination of SPN technology and Flex E will ensure the quality of service and level of isolation across all layers of the transport layer.China Mobile hopes the UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will standardize the SPN and has Powered by Viavi, a hardware and software testing company, to create a common, interactive platform for network equipment manufacturers, chip developers, and radio transceiver manufacturers.
Oleg, Viavi's chief executive officer, said: "The major technologies, including SPNs, must be standardized by the International Telecommunication Union to achieve China Mobile's goal of launching 5G services by the end of 2019. We have enhanced our testing technology, To meet this goal, we have provided China Mobile with the best solution to provide China Mobile ecosystem partners with an operational network infrastructure.
It seems that South Korea claimed that the 23rd Olympic Winter Games will be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea will achieve 5G commercial.
According to media reports, there is a small village of only a few hundred people known as Yi Yi Zhi (transliteration) on the hill just three kilometers from the main venue of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games. Non-associated hill village, has become the world's first 5G full coverage of the village.
KT engineers, who reside in the village, told reporters: 'Take the wild boar that endangered the crops in the village as an example. In fact, boars are incredibly smart animals and there are indeed devices that attempt to expel wild boar by means of communication technology However, the current 4G network is still unable to distinguish the specific state of the wild boar, and the returned images are relatively vague, seriously affecting the efficiency of the eviction system and even causing human or other animals to be mistakenly injured.
For South Korea's alleged 5G network, some experts previously said in a micro-web interview that the full 5G standard has not yet landed, so Korea's claim that its 5G network is more commercially used and advertised than it actually is. (Proofreading / Blue Sky)
3. Mobile phone supply chain in the third quarter will be significantly warmed;
Set micro-grid news, Apple and Android camp smart phones have inventory adjustment phenomenon, mobile phone chip supply chain estimates, due to inventory adjustments and new machine deferred effect, the overall mobile phone components in the first three quarters will see the obvious pull goods kinetic energy.
Last year, the smartphone market was not as good as expected. The major handset makers repaired their full-year shipments. In addition to the continuous decline in the sales of Apple's iPhone, Chinese brand factories that originally showed elevation growth also slowed their growth pace.
Among them, Huawei shipped about 153 million units last year, an annual increase of 10%; the second largest factory OPPO and the third largest factory Vivo were estimated less than 110 million and less than 100 million units, the annual growth rate of about 10% , Lower than the first estimate of three to four percent, only millet compared to the previous year achieved substantial growth.
As the new machine could not be sold in the second half of the year, the handset factories trimmed the volume of the component parts pulled in the first quarter of this year and the volume of pullback declined compared with the same period of last year.
Mobile phone chip supply chain that the Lunar New Year holiday sales, will be able to go to inventory an important indicator, and then decide whether there is a chance in March from the first wave of replenishment kinetic energy.
Currently, the first wave of new aircraft market this year, the factory falls about 4 to 5 months, the supply chain for the components, the second quarter will be due to new demand for the distribution of goods increased slightly, the third quarter stocking effect will be more obvious.
4.IHS: wireless charging product shipments increased by 40% in the next year will double;
According to IHS Markit, a research institute, nearly 500 million sets of consumer electronic devices with wireless charging were shipped in 2017, an increase of 40% annually. It is expected that the scale of 1 billion sets is expected to reach 2019.
IHS Markit pointed out that smartphones are the most important driver of rapid growth in the wireless charging market last year. After last year's flagship Galaxy S8 launched by Samsung in April last year, Apple's new iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus also followed Into the wireless charging technology.
In small household appliances, wireless charging is mainly electric toothbrush, IHSMarkit is expected to 2026 is expected to grow to more than 100 million sets of scale.
IHS Markit expects smartphone makers to launch smart watches that will grow by more than 90 million units by 2022. Consumer devices with wireless charging are expected to reach 1 billion units by 2019 to 2022 The year will reach 2 billion sets.
5. Pixel mobile phone shipped 3.9 million in 2017, HTC team to absorb the effect of this year;
Set micro-grid February 14 reports
Although the control of Android system, but Google has never given up manufacturing hardware plan.
According to the latest data from market research firm IDC, Google's 2017 Pixel and Pixel 2 shipments totaled 3.9 million units.
IDC analyst and research director Francisco Jeronimo said the figure includes two generations of Google's handsets, Pixel 1 and Pixel 2. Compared with the 1.5 billion shipments of the global smartphone market, this only accounts for 'A very small part.' And in just the fourth quarter of 2017, Apple sold 77.3 million iPhones.
The analyst also said Pixel handsets double sales in 2017. The data from another market research firm Kantar Worldpanel also provide the same conclusion: Google's share of the U.S. handset market has risen from 1.8% to 2.8% .
Although the number looks small, but Google continues to overweight Pixel mobile phone development team.
January 30 this year, Google and HTC jointly announced that Google 1.1 billion acquisition of the HTC Pixel team has been officially completed.
According to the agreement, after the completion of this transaction, Google will get the entire HTC Pixel team, including more than 2,000 intelligent machine experts, which is equivalent to the current number of one-fifth of the HTC engineering team. At the same time, it also makes Taipei a Google's largest engineering center in the Asia Pacific region.In addition to the team, HTC also non-exclusive ownership of some intellectual property rights to Google.
Rick Osterloh, head of hardware operations at Google, commented: "In the coming years, a talented team will work to bring better and more innovative products to everyone," said Rick Osterloh, head of hardware operations at Google. (Proofreading / blue sky)
6. Analysts predict the 2019 new iPhone or with a fingerprint on the screen
Set micro-network news, if you are not used to the iPhone's "sea of ?? shape" may wish to wait and see.For the 2018 2019 new iPhone, Atherton Research vice president and chief analyst Jean Baptiste Su predicted the bold reasoning Apple has the opportunity to import 'in-screen fingerprint technology' into the new iPhone in 2019, allowing Face IDs and Touch IDs to co-exist in the new iPhone.
Jean Baptiste Su believes that in addition to the new iPhone X in 2018, iPhone X Plus will be 6.2 inches screen appearance, compared to the 2017 style (iPhone X) will not have much change in 2019, Apple will be the new iPhone After several months of testing, he believes that Face X (Face Recognition Technology) equipped on the iPhone X in daily life as the Touch ID (Fingerprint Identification Technology) is more diverse and reliable, it is speculated that Apple will In 2019 for the iPhone to join the screen under the fingerprint technology.
In addition, he also speculated that iPhone's 'TrueDepth camera' will narrow in 2019, which is similar to that of the previous Korean media.
Kwok Kei investment consultant Guo Mingfu pointed out that in 2018 a total of three new iPhone, equipped with OLED screen will be 5.8-inch, 6.5-inch models, as well as equipped with a 6.1-inch LCD screen styles for the iPhone X equipped with the new Face ID Technology, Guo Mingli has said that Apple is evaluating user feedback, if the result is not as expected, Apple has the opportunity to turn to use fingerprint recognition technology.
Although Vivo X20 Plus was the first to achieve the first in-screen fingerprint recognition, it is still done in a specific area, and if in-screen fingerprinting expands full-screen, it's impossible to believe that Apple is not tempted.