1. The United States intends to use the Economic Emergency Act to limit China's investment-sensitive areas;
WASHINGTON — The Financial Times quoted a senior official from the US Treasury Department as saying on April 20 that the Trump administration is considering the use of the 'Emergency Emergency Act' to fully restrict Chinese companies’ investment in sensitive areas of the United States.
Heath Tarbert, Assistant Secretary for International Affairs of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, said at a meeting in Washington on Thursday (April 19) that the U.S. government is evaluating the launch of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (International). The feasibility of the Emergency Economic Powers Act. This Act gives the U.S. President extensive and high-level authority, including preventing impending transactions, canceling transactions, and freezing foreign assets. Trump can thus fully restrict China to U.S. semiconductor/chips, robots, Artificial intelligence (AI), 5G mobile technology and other sensitive areas of investment.
The New York Times reported more than a month ago that the White House is planning to use this law to restrict China’s investment in sensitive areas to prevent China from seizing the world’s leading position in cutting-edge technology. But Tabot is considered to be the Trump administration. The senior official confirmed the news in the first place.
The United States has already blocked some Chinese investments and is also expanding the scope of restrictions on Chinese companies investing in the United States. The statistics of consulting firm Rhodium Group show that in 2017 China’s investment in the United States was worth US$15 billion. , Compared with the record high of 46 billion U.S. dollars in 2016, it has fallen sharply.
At the same time, the U.S. Foreign Investment Commission (CFIUS) is also increasing its review of U.S. investment in mergers and acquisitions. In March this year, the agency rejected Broadcom’s application for acquisition of U.S. chip giant Qualcomm (Qualcomm) in Singapore. In January, the agency rejected the acquisition of MoneyGram by Ant Financial Services on the grounds of national security. In September last year, the agency rejected an investor with Chinese government support for US chip company Laidi for the same reason. Lattice Semiconductor's mergers and acquisitions.
The U.S. Congress is also drafting a bill that intends to further expand the authority of the U.S. Foreign Investment Commission to cover foreign direct investment in the U.S. joint venture.
However, the power of the “International Emergency Economic Power Act” that the Trump administration is considering to use will far exceed that of CFIUS. The U.S. government will be able to engage in M&A transactions in any area, regardless of whether the transaction involves national security.
At a regular press conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on April 20, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hua Chunying accused the United States of restricting China’s investment in the United States’ high-tech field to be “protecting trade protectionism in the name of national security.” She said: ' In the final analysis (this) is to expose the US hegemony mentality that 'only if I can, you are not allowed to have'.
The Bloomberg News quoted four people as saying that the U.S. Department of the Treasury is making plans to select areas that prohibit Chinese companies from investing in the United States. Possible areas include: Semiconductors, 5G mobile communications technology, etc.
2. The global chip fever Why Facebook is also creating AI chips?
'NetEase smart news April 21 news' By following Google and Apple's footsteps, Facebook can manufacture processors, accelerate the speed of its many artificial intelligence algorithms, and even provide power for new hardware products.
According to Bloomberg, Facebook hopes to hire talents to establish an 'end-to-end' chip R&D organization in the company. This job announcement specifically mentions application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) that are used to efficiently perform some very specific tasks. Such as face recognition. It also mentions system-on-chip (SoC) hardware, which is often used in mobile or small devices - Facebook can put it in the Oculus VR headset or (currently delayed launch) smart speaker in.
Importantly, the chip is a multi-billion dollar business, and it can also save a lot of money for middlemen such as Intel. In addition, as Moore's Law is about to stop, it is getting harder and harder to increase speed on general-purpose chips. So designing new chips for very specific internal tasks can help the company improve performance. Facebook hopes that the new chip will reduce costs and speed up.
Currently, more and more technology companies are manufacturing chips that threaten the businesses of companies such as Qualcomm, Intel, and Nvidia. Google is developing artificial intelligence chips to power its data centers and open source software. Apple has been developing New chips to run its mobile products, and Microsoft has just released the latest chips for IoT products.
3.NAND Flash continued to be strong in the second half of the year;
The recent NAND Flash market is showing signs of slowing down. The industry believes that the first quarter was originally a traditional off-season, and last year prices have risen too much, so the quotations fell from December last year to the first quarter of this year. However, market stocks are digesting. The second quarter will gradually warm up. Although there are still some variables, there are already signs of slow recovery. After the third quarter, it is expected that the season will still be welcomed.
According to the research institute, state-controlled technology company, the NAND Flash market showed oversupply in the first quarter. Despite the increase in demand after the number of working days in the second quarter, the growth momentum is still weak, and it is expected to maintain a slight oversupply situation. Continue to go down.
Mei Rong, general manager of NAND Flash control chip factory in the US, also stated that NAND Flash was oversupply in the first half of the year and prices continued to decline slowly until the second quarter, but in the second half of the year, the storage capacity of many new mobile phones will increase. As large as 128GB, it will drive a lot of demand, and overall market conditions may become tight, but it will not be out of stock. Follow-up will also observe how much of a traditional HDD hard drive will be replaced by a solid state drive (SSD). Overall, NAND Flash will grow in the future. The kinetic energy is still amazing.
Yan Jiazhang mentioned that the 64- and 72-layer NAND flash production capacity has gradually started to be released in large quantities, and the situation is still healthy. After the launch of the 96-layer NAND and QLC NAND, it is expected to drive another wave of price reductions.
In view of the situation in the second half of the year, Jibang believes that from the demand side, there will be a busy season effect, the access market will recover as the price is revised down, and the capacity for smartphones will continue to increase, which will drive demand growth. From the perspective of supply, in response to the market trend in the first half of the year, some suppliers have slowed their production expansion, and the next-generation 9x-layer NAND flash process will not ship until 2019, which will have limited impact on supply this year. .
In addition, regarding the NAND Flash market, the outside world not only pays attention to the progress of process upgrades, but also pays considerable attention to the development of the Yangtze River's storage on the other side. A high-level memory industry pointed out that for Chinese manufacturers, cutting into the DRAM field is a challenge, and related development requires patents. Therefore, we have not yet seen a complete layout plan. In particular, there are big factories that are watching closely. If there are outputs from the land plants, they may be sued. However, China's self-made NAND Flash will surely rise. It is only a matter of time before the Yangtze River will store its future. It will have a place in the market. Jibang mentioned that outsiders are concerned about the storage capacity of the Yangtze River. It is expected that the scale will be larger from 2019 onwards.
4. MediaTek shipment volume
MediaTek's operations gradually bottomed out this year, benefiting from the recovery in non-Hispanic mobile phone demand, strong mid-to-low-end mobile phone shipments, and strong growth in dual-digit growth in the second quarter of mobile phone chip shipments from MediaTek. The gross margin is expected to return to 40 in the second half of the year. %, Fundamentally strong, corporate buyers surrounded, foreign investment in the past five trading days to buy nearly 8,000, the stock price rushed to this year's high, short-, medium-, long-term moving averages showed a long row.
MediaTek was founded in 1997. It was an early semiconductor chip design company that invested in UMC Group. It is a major supplier of wireless communication and digital media chip integration solutions. It ranks among the world's top ten semiconductor chip factories. Originally used as optical storage for DVD and Blu-ray control. Chip makers, as the market matured, focused on wireless communications, high-definition television and mobile devices, and even actively deployed Internet of Things in recent years, the automotive and AI fields have achieved significant results. The company misjudged China in 2015. Data base frequency upgrade speed, China Mobile pushed high-order Cat.7 data specifications, major customers OPPO, Vivo switched to Qualcomm, plus high-pass and Spreadtrum before and after the game, the competition in price cuts continued, resulting in gross margin fell from 2015 all the way, in 2015 In the fourth quarter, the gross profit margin fell below 40%, and the annual revenue performance also showed no sign of improvement.
However, after two years of adjustment, the company has achieved great success. After optimizing and optimizing the cost structure at the baseband, the sales of P23 and MT6739 chips hit a good performance last year. CEO Cai Lixing vowed to take back the mobile phone chip market and lose its share. The new mobile phone regained customers. Adopted, in the fourth quarter of last year, the gross margin has stabilized.
In the first half of this year, MediaTek’s flagship P60 chip has successively reported successes. It has won OPPO, Meizu’s big single, and has previously vowed to regain lost market share. In addition, overseas markets have made good progress, attacking Micromax with Xiaomi, OPPO and local mobile phone makers. As India recovers business opportunities, the legal person expects that the shipment of mobile phone chips will increase significantly in the second quarter, which is expected to show double-digit growth compared with the previous quarter.
The industry pointed out that in the first half of the year, non-independent camps launched new mobile phone and client inventory establishment requirements. The demand for mobile phone-related chips recovered at the end of March. In the first half of the year, the main pusher of the P60 chip weighed on its excellent cost structure and moderately profitable customers. The second quarter of smart phones Shipments of chips exceeding expectations are expected to be strong. It is expected that the shipments of mobile phone chips in the second quarter will look at more than 100 million units, and the gross profit rate in the second quarter is also expected to rebound to more than 37% quarter by quarter. For the mobile phone chip, the gross profit rate for the whole year is expected to rise back to 38%, or even 40%, and the annual revenue will increase by 6% to 10%. The annual shipment volume will be about 460 million units, an increase of 5.4% year-on-year.
Economic Daily provided
In addition, recently, ZTE Corporation, a Chinese telecommunications equipment and smart phone factory, has been granted an export ban by the US Department of Commerce. US companies cannot sell any component to ZTE for the next seven years, and Qualcomm and Bo will provide ZTE chips significantly. Affected by the ban, ZTE will push ZTE to start seeking Taiwan-related chip supply. Although MediaTek clearly understands that it will have no impact on business conditions in the short term, it will not benefit from the situation. However, the market still thinks of Qualcomm being blocked. MediaTek is still the biggest beneficiary. Economic Daily