The Week In Review: Manufacturing

Manufacturing
There are more changes at SEMI. SEMI has named David Anderson as president of the SEMI Americas region. Most recently, Anderson was chief executive and chairman of Novati, a specialty manufacturing fab. He replaces Karen Savala, who was president of the SEMI Americas region for six years. In an e-mail, Savala confirmed she left SEMI in October.

Meanwhile, in October, SEMI announced the retirement of Dennis McGuirk, SEMI’s president and CEO. McGuirk will continue to lead SEMI in his current capacity until a successor is appointed. In addition, SEMI recently named new presidents in China and Europe.

A spokeswoman for SEMI said there is no major makeover taking place at SEMI. “No makeover,” according to the SEMI spokeswoman. “Karen retired from SEMI after 32 years. (She is) ready for new adventures. Denny moved across the country for the SEMI CEO job and stayed five years. He announced his retirement in October, and will stay on until a replacement is found.”

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China continues to expand its efforts in the IC packaging market. Taiwan OSAT ChipMOS and China’s Tsinghua Unigroup have terminated one deal but formed another. The two companies scrapped their original deal under which Tsinghua Unigroup would take a 25% stake in ChipMOS. Instead, under the new agreement, ChipMOS will sell 54.98% of the equity interests of its wholly owned subsidiary in Shanghai to Tsinghua Unigroup.

Photronics has announced that its majority-owned subsidiary,Photronics DNP Mask Corp. (PDMC), received the “Best Partner Award” from United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) for the second consecutive year.

Chipmakers
Samsung Electronics has announced a detailed roadmap of actions with the objective of enhancing the company’s long-term, sustainable value creation for shareholders.

QuickLogic has joined GlobalFoundries’ FDXcelerator Partner Program, an ecosystem that facilitates the development of GlobalFoundries’ 22FDX technology. 22FDX is a 22nm version of FD-SOI. Current members of the FDXcelerator Partner Program also include Synopsys, Cadence, INVECAS, VeriSilicon, CEA Leti, Dream Chip and Encore Semi.

Market research
Worldwide tablet shipments are expected to decline by 12% in 2016, rounding out the year at 182.3 million shipments, according to International Data Corp. IDC expects the market to rebound in 2018, although growth will remain in the low single digits as detachable tablets slowly gain traction.

Worldwide PC shipments are forecast to decline by 6.4% in 2016, according to IDC. This is an improvement over August’s projection for a decline of 7.2% in 2016. While IDC’s outlook for 2017 remains at minus 2.1% year-over-year growth, the absolute volumes are slightly higher based on stronger 2016 shipments.

Worldwide smartphone shipments are expected to reach 1.45 billion units with a year-over-year growth rate of 0.6% in 2016, according to IDC. Although growth remains positive, it is down significantly from the 10.4% growth in 2015.

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