Taiwan, Apple, iPad, iPhone, TSMC, UMC, Renesas, semiconductor Taiwan comforted by Apple chip spend cycle

LONDON – Despite concern about the global economic situation Taiwan is taking comfort from an expected cycle of semiconductor purchasing to come in the second half of 2011, driven by the needs of forthcoming Apple products, according to a Taiwan Economic News report.

Apple is expected to start buying chips for upcoming products including the Macbook Air, iPhone 4S and iPad 3, in August, the report said.

Foundries Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. and United Microelectronics Corp. as well as packaging companies in Taiwan have reduced estimates of wafer growth in the third quarter.

However, Apple has completed the technical specifications, chip lists and certification processes for a number of its products and placed orders with suppliers, according to the report, which cited industry observers as sources. This is likely to benefit the Taiwan semiconductor industry in the third and fourth quarters.

Qualcomm is the major supplier of handset ICs for Apple and Qualcomm is expected to place orders with TSMC and packaging firm Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. in August or September the report said.

Other likely beneficiaries listed in the report are likely to be Chipbond Technology Inc. and Ardentek Corp. performing packaging for Renesas and Texas Instruments, Realtek Semiconductor Corp. for Ethernet chips, Macronix International for NOR flash memory for BIOS, Skyworth Group for memory card reader chips and Richtek Technology for power management chips.


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Taiwan, Apple, iPad, iPhone, TSMC, UMC, Renesas, semiconductor Taiwan comforted by Apple chip spend cycle