Finance

The SEMI August book-to-bill ratio was 1.06. Bookings were $1.67 billion which were 5% up on July and 23.8% up on August 2014. Billings were $1.58 billion which was 1.3% above the July billings and 21.9% higher than August 2014. “Given the trends through the year so far, the book-to-bill ratio stayed above parity on a three-month average basis,” says ...

ARM has set itself some aggressive targets in the mobile computing, networking and data-centre markets. ARM expects to double its royalties from mobile computing applications in the next five years, says CFO Chris Kennedy, this will take the figure to around $750 million. Units are expected to grow 7% CAGR till 2020, and the increasing ARM content in SoCs e.g. ...

HP is to cut another 25,000 to 30,000 jobs as it splits into HP Inc and HP Enterprise. The cuts are expected to be implemented by the end of October. The latest job losses, announced yesterday, will hit HP Enterprise, although HP Inc is expected to lose 3,300 jobs over the next three years. “We’ve done a significant amount of work ...

Harriet Green, formerly boss of distributors Macro, Arrow Asia/Pac and Premier Farnell, is to run IBM’s internet of things (IoT) business. Green is vice-president and genreal manager of IBM’s IoT division, which says it will invest $3bn in analytics and hardware for implementing IoT. Green joins IBM from heading travel company Thomas Cook. As well as heading IoT, Green will lead IBM’s ...

China made $12.5bn-worth of ICs last year, reports the China SIA (Semiconductor Industry Association), of which $5bn came from IC design, $3.7bn from IC fabrication and $3.8bn from IC packaging and testing. China invested $10bn in the memory industry, because it is the largest memory market and buys 75% of the global memory. Most  Chinese IC design companies rely on parent ...

A surge in bookings for semiconductor manufacturing equipment in Q2 meant that bookings exceeded billings in the quarter, reports SEMI, although there were some erratic local variations. Billings were $9.4bn; bookings were $10.2bn. Billings were 1% down on Q1 and 2% down on Q2 2014. Bookings were 6% up on Q1 and 2% up on Q2 2014. Taiwan’s Q2 billings ...

Ten winners have emerged from the ARM, Unicef, Frog competition for wearable tech. They are: · CommunicAID, U.S: a bracelet that tracks medication treatment · Droplet, U.S: a wrist-worn wearable water purification device · Guard Band, Vietnam: a wristband that helps protect children from abuse · Khushi Baby, India and U.S: a necklace-type wearable to track child immunization in the ...

GloFo is reported to be looking at 5000 voluntary lay-offs in the US mainly from the chip operations it acquired from IBM. In July GloFo was paid $1.5 billion to take over IBM’s plants in East Fishkill, New York and Burlington, Vermont. It is these operations, employing 5000 people, which are expected to take the brunt of the lay-offs. GloFo’s ...

By 2019 there should be 110 volume production 300mm fabs in the world compared to 87 today, reports IC Insights. The number of 300mm fabs will likely peak between 115-120. By comparison, the greatest number of volume-production 200mm wafer fabs in operation was 210 (the number declined to 154 fabs at the end of 2014). The list of companies with ...

Infineon is No.1 in power semis for the 12th year running. ‘After acquiring International Rectifier at the beginning of the year, Infineon’s 19.2% market share now makes it the clear market leader,’ says Infineon, ‘in comparison, both companies’ market share in 2013 summed up to approximately 17.5%, according to IHS. Infineon’s closest competitor lags behind with 7%.’ “Through organic growth ...