Shipments of Apple Watch 3 are expected to surge 20% on year to reach 23-25 million units in the coming year, which will greatly benefit Taiwan players in the supply, particularly backend packaging and testing service providers, according industry sources.

The sources said that Universal Scientific Industrial (USI), an affiliate under the Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) group, saw its revenues for November 2017 soar 23.89% on year to hit a new monthly high of CNY3.193 billion (US$482.81 million), due mainly to fulfilling SiP (system in package) orders for Apple Watch 3.

The ASE group is responsible for packaging and testing radio frequency, Wi-Fi and MEMS chips for iPhone and Apple Watch devices, and is expected to score record quarterly revenues in the fourth quarter of 2017, the sources said.

The sources said that Apple Watch 3 is increasingly popular in the consumer electronics market along with its incorporating physical exercise and personal health passport functions, with its overall shipments likely to hit a new high of 25 million units in 2018.

Meanwhile, ShunSin Technology, an IC packaging and testing arm of the Foxconn Group, is also reportedly actively vying for SiP orders for new 2018 Apple Watch models, although Apple is not likely to change its order allocation in the coming year, the sources said. But ShunSin will have a chance to win the orders in 2019, when Apple is expected to diversify the SiP modules packaging and testing orders to more players to digest a sharp increase in demand for such modules, the sources predicted.

ShunSin is now a packaging partner for Avago's power amplifier ICs, and is intensifying its packaging and testing capabilities for MEMS, optical transmission and reception, fingerprint recognition modules. The company has tapped into the supply chains of first-tier China smartphone vendors to handle backend services for fingerprint recognition modules.

At the moment, revenues from the SiP sector takes the largest share (56%) of ShunSin's total revenues, down from the corresponding percentage of 77% seen in 2016 as a result of its efforts in expanding its service scope to include optical transmission and reception modules, automotive electronics, sensing modules, among others.

By: DocMemory
Copyright © 2023 CST, Inc. All Rights Reserved