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| Trade rises in Germany |
2/12/2019 |
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Exports rose 1.5 percent from November, to 112.3 billion euros ($127.3 billion), while imports rose 1.2 percent to 92.9 billion euros, adjusted for seasonal and calendar factors, the Federal Statistical Office said. That widened Germany's trade surplus to 19.4 billion euros from November's 18.9 billion euros.
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| Smartphone shipment to decline again this year |
2/12/2019 |
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Other than a handful of high-growth markets like India and South Korea, markets were down across the board. IDC blames the declines on multiple factors, including longer phone replacement cycles, increasing penetration in large markets and political and economic uncertainty.
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| Malaysian IC industry seen signs of slow down |
2/11/2019 |
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The local semiconductor industry has witnessed exceptional strong growth over the past two years, partly due to the performance of the memory segment. “We expect the sector to undergo a cyclical downturn in the first half of 2019 (1H19), before starting to recover in 2H19 after the inventory adjustment period is over.
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| Apple take steps to strengthen its modem chip design |
2/11/2019 |
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The Cupertino, California-based company has posted job listings for modem engineers in San Diego, a hub for wireless design talent because of Qualcomm’s longtime presence there and a place where Apple has said it plans to build up its workforce.
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| Nokia looks for savation from 5G |
2/11/2019 |
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Having jettisoned the mobile handset business and undertaken a series of strategic acquisitions, including the purchase of Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia is betting the farm on 5G, a nascent technology with the potential to serve a larger customer base, create new revenue streams, and afford the company the stability it has sought for a decade.
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| China IC production to grow 15% every year |
2/11/2019 |
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China has been the largest consumer of ICs since 2005. IC production in China accounted for 15.3% of its domestic market of $155 billion in 2018, up from $12.6% in 2013, the firm said. By 2023, IC Insights projects that IC production in China will account for 20.5% of its market total.
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| ST bought control share of its wafer supplier |
2/8/2019 |
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ST will acquire 55% of Norstel’s share capital, with an option to acquire the remaining 45% subject to certain conditions. ST is the only semiconductor company with automotive-grade silicon carbide in mass production today.
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| EU reduced economic forecast |
2/8/2019 |
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The EU's executive Commission cut the forecast for this year to 1.3 percent from 1.9 percent in their earlier forecast issued in the autumn. The eurozone probably grew 1.9 percent last year, slowing from a 10-year high of 2.4 percent in 2017.
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| Judge want to narrow potential damages at the Qualcomm/Apple trial |
2/7/2019 |
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A federal judge on Tuesday granted Apple’s request to preclude Qualcomm from seeking financial compensation for infringement before the lawsuit was filed in 2017. The judge also ruled that Apple isn’t infringing one of the several patents that Qualcomm says are at stake in the litigation.
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| Trump plans to nominate World Bank critic to lead it |
2/7/2019 |
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Now the undersecretary for international affairs at the Treasury Department, David Malpass has been an outspoken skeptic of the 189-nation World Bank, a leading source of funding for economic development. The World Bank provides low-cost loans for projects around the world. Among its key missions is helping combat poverty in developing countries.
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| Revenue rose 7 percent at Daimler |
2/7/2019 |
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Daimler saw profitability fall as it faced multiple challenges. The U.S.-China trade war meant new import taxes on cars made in the U.S. and sold in China. Bottlenecks in getting cars certified for emissions procedures also affected the business. The operating profit margin on sales at Mercedes, a key earnings indicator, fell to 7.3 percent from 9.5 percent in the same quarter a year earlier.
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| Tesla Inc has agreed to buy energy storage company Maxwell Technologies |
2/6/2019 |
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Maxwell executives told investors in January that it had developed and patented a “dry electrode” technology that could significantly increase the driving range and reduce the cost of electric vehicle batteries. In a presentation, Maxwell said it expected strategic alliances “within six months” centered around this technology.
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| Winbond weakened for the quarter |
2/5/2019 |
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Net profit fell to NT$879 million (US$28.59 million) in the final quarter of last year, down from NT$2.84 billion in the previous quarter, while consolidated sales fell 13.23 percent quarterly to NT$11.87 billion, the company said in a statement.
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| U.S. job picture is rosy |
2/5/2019 |
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The healthy 304,000 jobs gain the government reported Friday illustrated the job market's durability nearly a decade into the economic expansion. The U.S. has now added jobs for 100 straight months, the longest such period on record.
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| Sodium-ion batteries to replace lithium-ion on EV's |
2/4/2019 |
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Sodium-ion batteries are an attractive alternative to lithium-based ion batteries due to several reasons. Sodium is not a limited resource - it is abundant in the earth's crust as well as in seawater. Also, sodium-based components have a possibility to yield much faster charging time given the appropriate crystal structure design.
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| Ic Insights: R and D spending to increase for the next few years |
2/4/2019 |
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IC Insights expects new challenges such as three-dimensional (3D) die-stacking technologies, growing complexities in end-use applications, and other significant manufacturing barriers to raise semiconductor R&D spending to a slightly higher growth rate of 5.5% per year in the 2018-2023 forecast period.
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