Facebook is apparently jumping on the smart speaker bandwagon, with a new report Tuesday out of Taiwan claiming that the social networking giant is looking to take on Amazon's Echo, Google's Home and Apple's HomePod smart speakers.
Apple's competitors have adopted a wait-and-see approach, pushing back smartphone chip orders as they're waiting to see the OLED-based iPhone 8 before making future plans.
Apple has purchased sophisticated equipment to set up its own research and development facility in Taiwan to develop its own OLED technology in order to reduce its dependence on Samsung Electronics for iPhone OLED panels.
According to a repot Monday from Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes, the Cupertino giant has purchased chemical vapor deposition (CVD) machines from Korea-based Sunic System to build a 2.5G OLED panel line.
In-house OLEDs will allow Apple to differentiate its products from other handsets that use Samsung-built OLED panels. According to a Chinese-language Commercial Times report cited by DigiTimes, the move will break the dominance of Japan-based Canon Kokki, currently the primary supplier of CVD machines that ships the bulk of its output to Samsung.
“Samsung has bought five sets of OLED manufacturing equipment from Canon Tokki so far in 2017 and has signed contracts to buy five out of ten such machines to be rolled out by the Japan-based machinery company in 2018,” said the Commercial Times.
LG Display also purchased these machines but Apple has yet to validate its OLED panels.
iPhone 8 mockup via iDropNews.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has been exclusively fabricating Apple's in-house designed mobile chips for iOS devices since 2015 and the company has now reportedly accelerated its efforts to build seven-nanometer chips in 2018.
A major malfunction at one of its manufacturing facilities in Taiwan has caused DRAM chip provider Micron Technology to scrap half of the wafers produced at the plant, trade publication DigiTimes said Thursday. About 60,000 units of twelve-inch wafers have been scrapped.
The problems with nitrogen gas have caused production lines at the fab to stop temporarily, said a report from Taiwan's TechNews, without citing its source.
Research firm TrendForce said that a nitrogen gas dispensing system malfunction had led to the contamination of wafers and equipment in Micron's plant near central Taiwan.
The facility in question is known to have produced LPDDR4 RAM for iPhone devices in the past.
”The temporary shutdown of Fab-2 could have an impact on shipments of the upcoming new iPhone devices as well,” added the research firm.
TrendForce analysts base their reports on channel checks in the supply chain.
“Regarding recent rumors about Micron's fabrication facility in Taoyuan, Taiwan, Micron hereby clarifies that there was no nitrogen leaking incident nor evacuating of personnel,” Micron said in a statement to Reuters.
“There was indeed a minor facility event but operations are recovering speedily without material impact to the business.”
According to DRAMeXchange in June, the average selling price of these chips will rise five percent sequentially in the third quarter of this year as supply remains tight. The rise in DRAM prices could also be seasonal due to the expected ramp up in iPhone production during the summer ahead of new models coming in the fall.
DRAMeXchange is a division of TrendForce.
It's unclear if the incident at the Micron plant will impact Apple's launch volume targets for the OLED-based iPhone 8 and the iterative LCD-based iPhone 7s and iPhone 7s Plus smartphones.
The Cupertino company typically diversifies its suppliers in order to minimize risk.
For what it's worth, Apple has also experienced a shortage of 3D NAND flash chips for 2017 iPhones due to lower-than-expected yield rates for SK Hynix and Toshiba's 3D NAND technologies, forcing the Cupertino giant to turn to Samsung as a supplier.
iPhone 7 X-ray image courtesy of iFixit
Apple's upcoming iPhone models—the OLED-based iPhone 8 and the iterative LCD-based iPhone 7s and iPhone 7s Plus handsets—have been hit in a global shortage of 3D NAND flash chips, forcing the Cupertino giant to call on Samsung in an effort to secure more.
According to a new report Thursday from DigiTimes, the overall supply of 3D NAND flash components for 2017 iPhones has fallen short of Apple's orders by as much as thirty percent.
That's because the company's current flash chip suppliers SK Hynix and Toshiba have both experienced lower-than-expected yield rates for their 3D NAND technologies.
SK Hynix is among the bidders for Toshiba’s lucrative flash chip unit.
Here's an excerpt from the DigiTimes report:
Apple has turned to Samsung for more NAND chip supplies for its upcoming phones, since Samsung has relatively stable yield rates for 3D NAND technology and has scaled up its output of 3D NAND chips.
TrendForce estimated that supplies of the 3D NAND flash storage chip won't ease until the middle of 2018. “The NAND Flash industry’s manufacturers will continue to devote their attention to the development of 3D 64L NAND Flash technology in 2017,” said TrendForce.
In the second half of 2018, some suppliers will also begin to shift their attention towards the industry’s newer and more advanced 96L flash storage products. Samsung, Toshiba and Micron Technology are currently transitioning to 64-layer 3D NAND flash products, while SK Hynix plans to jump straight to supplying 72-layer 3D chips.
“These gradual changes are all expected to have a potentially beneficial effect on the productions of NAND Flash in 2018,” added TrendForce. “As a result, their prices could start to fall as early as next year”. However, the global supply of NAND flash chips is set to remain tight through the end of 2017.
Business Korea said that Samsung Electronics (which leads the global NAND flash market), Toshiba, Western Digital and SK Hynix are accelerating the development of these three-dimensional NAND flash chip technologies, which basically stack more memory cells than 2D chips while utilizing existing mass production facilities.
The 128GB iPhone 7 model, for example, uses Toshiba’s 3D BiCS NAND technology, which stores three bits of data per transistor and stacks 48 NAND layers onto a single die, bringing accelerated read and write performance compared to 2D flash memory chips.
Orders for Microsoft's Surface devices, including the latest models, have been much smaller than the original expectations of Pegatron, the contract manufacturer which assembles them.
According to sources from the upstream supply chain cited in a DigiTimes report Tuesday, Pegatron Technology has seen weakening orders from clients recently.
Here's an excerpt from the report:
Since demand for Microsoft's Surface products has been seriously undermined by other first-tier vendors' similar devices, the software giant has been conservative about placing its orders, which have been much lower than than Pegatron's original expectations.
Pegatron also assembles iPhones alongside Apple's longtime manufacturer Foxconn.
The Windows giant unveiled a fifth-generation Surface Pro tablet on March 27 alongside a new Modern Keyboard with a built-in fingerprint reader and other accessories. Among other features, the device has 13.5 hours of battery life, Intel’s seventh-generation Core processor code-named “Kaby Lake”, a new Alcantara keyboard, a next-generation Surface Pen and more.
The same Intel chip also powers, Microsoft’s $999 MacBook rival, dubbed Surface Laptop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlZJw-zk0bU
Speaking of which, DigiTimes says that Surface Laptop orders are unlikely to boost Pegatron's revenues until later in the third quarter of 2017. Pegatron Vice Chairman Jason Cheng expects revenues in the second half of 2017 to at least stay flat year on year.
Microsoft is reportedly set to lay off thousands of sales staff around the world in the latest round of restructuring, TechCrunch said a few days ago. Bloomberg added that the redundancies would be “some of the most significant in the sales force in years.”
iPhone 8 production has allegedly hit another roadblock, with a sketchy report Tuesday by Taiwanese outlet DigiTimes suggesting the supposedly limited availability of 5.8-inch OLED display panels could hold back the phone's launch sales.
Citing industry sources, the trade publication says it'll be difficult for Apple to ship up to 60 million OLED-based iPhones in 2017.
“Only 3-4 million OLED-based new iPhone devices will be ready for shipping before the new smartphones are unveiled at a product event slated for September,” reads the article.
The publication did not give the reason for the allegedly limited OLED screen availability beyond stating that yield rates at assembly plants and the supply of OLED panels are “likely to become issues” for the Cupertino firm.
Take the report with a few grains of salt because Samsung Display recently negotiated a lucrative supply deal with Apple to build at least 80 million OLED panels for iPhone 8 in 2017.
In fact, the South Korean conglomerate is said to be supplying OLED screens for both iPhone 9 in 2018 and a yet-to-be-disclosed Apple device with a screen measuring 6.5 inches diagonally, as per The Korea Herald.
Besides, iPhone assemblers Foxconn, Pegatron and Wistron have been stepping up efforts to recruit more workers for their assembly lines in China, indicating that volume production of iPhone 8 is about to kick off.
On top of that, Apple's key chip supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company saw its revenues surge twenty percent sequentially in May, partly driven by shipments of iPhone 8's A11 processors to Apple.
iPhone 8 mockup top of post via Benjamin Geskin
Having put its memory-chip business on sale a few months ago, Japanese giant Toshiba said today that it has selected the consortium of Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, Bain Capital Private Equity and Development Bank of Japan as its preferred bidder.
According to DigiTimes, the aforementioned government-led consortium has presented the best proposal in terms of valuation, certainty of closing, retention of employees and maintenance of sensitive technology within Japan.
The definite agreement should be confirmed on June 28, when the consortium is scheduled to hold its shareholder meeting. The transaction, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approval, should close by March 2018.
Toshiba's memory semiconductor business was split from the parent company on April 1, 2017 as a wholly-owned subsidiary. Toshiba is among Apple's key suppliers of flash memory chips.
Samsung's display-making arm is set to supply up to eighty million smartphone panels for iPhone 8 in 2017, which will be based on active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) technology, Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes reported last week.
On top of that, Samsung will build an additional 80 million AMOLED panels in 2017, but they'll be used to supply orders from Samsung Electronics and its other smartphone clients.
As per sources, Samsung is expected to “keep some flexibility” if Apple places more orders.
The report claims that component makers have now kicked off mass production of parts for both the AMOLED-based iPhone 8 models and the iterative LCD-based updates in the form of iPhone 7s and iPhone 7s Plus, the latter two featuring a reinforced glass chassis with a shiny metal frame holding together the “glass sandwich” design.
As indicated by the current manufacturing status of the upstream supply chain, iPhone 8 won't enter mass production until after mid-September, with production volumes in the third quarter pegged at around three million units, meaning Apple will likely be unable to keep up with iPhone 8 demand for a few weeks or even months.
Switching the next iPhone from LCD panels to AMOLEDs is a sea change for Apple's supply chain given the tens of millions of iPhones the Cupertino company sells each quarter. Other suppliers, like Japan Display, Sharp and LG Display are pouring big money into AMOLED production plants, but they're not expected to join Apple's AMOLED supply chain before 2018.
Combined shipments of existing iPhones, including iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone SE and the 32GB iPhone 6 are estimated to reach a total of 25-30 million units during the second half of 2017, bringing Apple's overall iPhone shipments in the third quarter to around 45-50 million units.
Image: iPhone 8 CNC-machined model via leakster Benjamin Geskin.
Chip foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which counts Apple as its biggest client, is ready to move its cutting-edge seven-nanometer process technology to volume production in 2018.
According to DigiTimes, an improved version of TSMC's seven-nanometer process using extreme ultraviolet technology will be ready for volume production in 2018, according to company co-CEO CC Wei.
The firm's five-nanometer node is slated to enter risk production in 2019, Wei added.
TSMC currently makes A10 chips for iPhone 7 and is said to be exclusively churning out the upcoming Apple-designed A11 processors for iPhone 8 and other 2017 iOS devices.
TSMC in April reportedly began stockpiling A11 chips for 2017 iPhones.
The firm should step up its pace of inventory building from June onward, said industry sources.
iPhone 8's A11 system-on-a-chip should be built on TSMC's ten-nanometer process technology, yielding faster performance and lower power consumption.
The A11 Fusion chip inside iPhone 7 is being manufactured on TSMC's 16-nanometer node.
Apple is building a brand new chip dedicated to artificial intelligence and machine learning, Bloomberg said recently, but it's unclear if the new chip will make its way into iPhone 8.
Apple is expected to change iPhone's screen aspect ratio from 16:9 on iPhone 7 to 18:9 on iPhone 8, according to multiple reports. Economic Daily News said today that the device's screen ratio will change to 18.5:9 instead of the previous 16:9.
18.5:9 accounts for the rumored curvature of iPhone 8's OLED display: the phone's active display area is understood to be 5.1 or 5.2 inches in the precise 18:9 aspect ratio.
Yesterday, DigiTimes said that Apple is expected to unveil a new iPhone in the second half of 2017, equipped with a 5.8-inch AMOLED panel in the—you guessed right—18:9 aspect ratio.
Aspect ratio is the relationship between the height and width of a display. In simpler terms, a 16:9 screen has 16 pixels in one direction for every 9 pixels in the other. The most common aspect ratios are 4:3, popularized by older TVs, and 16:9 found on widescreen ones.
18:9 has been popularized by the latest phones from Samsung and LG, which have screens that are taller than the 16:9 ratio used by the majority of smartphones.
Already, these new phones have prompted panel vendors to expand capacity to meet fast-growing demand for 18:9 smartphone displays.
It looks like the 18:9 screen aspect ratio is here to stay, but what's so special about it?
Mockup of iPhone 8 with Full Vision Display, via iFanr.
For starters, the 18:9 screen aspect ratio (you could just call it a 2:1 display) results in a display that's a little bit taller than a typical 16:9 screen. As a result, an 18:9 phone may provide a better grip than its 16:9 counterpart.
As a bonus, 18:9 is perfectly suited for Split View multitasking that Apple is expected to bring to iPhone with iOS 11. More importantly, on an 18:9 screen you can have one app on top of another in portrait mode. In the Camera app, as an example, you might be able to take a square photo on half of the screen and review it on the other half.
18:9 screens also show more content vertically so users see more of a webpage in Safari, additional images in their Instagram feed, more tweets and so forth, without scrolling.
On the downside, a majority of HD videos today are encoded in the 16:9 format and many games and apps are optimized for 16:9 on a landscape mode. If iPhone 8 will really come outfitted with an 18:9 display, all 16:9 videos will show blank space on the sides of the phone.
As Ron Amadeo of Ars Technica noted in his review of Galaxy S8, the device's unusual aspect ratio results in pillarboxing when watching 16:9 video without zooming or stretching it.
What's the point of having thin bezels on a phone if your 16:9 movie-watching experience suffers from blank space on the sides, you might be asking. While this is no doubt concerning, you can always double-tap to prompt iOS's media player to zoom in the video so that it fills the entire screen, in which case parts of the video would get cropped out.
Still, 18:9 could gain momentum if filmmakers adopt it.
iPhone 8 concept courtesy of designer Gábor Balogh.
For what it's worth, select new shows on Amazon Video and Netflix are shot in 18:9. Plus, Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro is pushing the new Univisum 2:1 format (or 18:9) versus the typically wider 2.20:1 aspect ratio commonly used in movie theaters nowadays.
It's unclear, and this is important, if iPhone 8's upgraded camera will feature a new aspect ratio that's closer to 18:9. Take Galaxy S8's 12-megapixel camera which shoots in 4:3 by default. But start shooting in the 18.5:9 mode and you only get 7.9-megapixel of its capabilities.
In the same vein, LG G6's thirteen-megapixel camera offers a maximum of 8.7-megapixel capability in 18.5:9 mode, or 9.7 megapixels for 16:9 images. Only 4:3 images can be shot in the full 13-megapixel resolution.
On the other hand, as iPhone 8 is said to include an active screen area at the display's bottom potentially designed for showing persistent on-screen controls, like Android, it's entirely conceivably that the actual content area could be in the 16:9 aspect ratio.
Apps are likely going to need to be updated to take the full advantage of the 18:9 canvas, but having been there before we expect a relatively painless transition. Be that as it may, Apple certainly is no stranger to making an iPhone's screen taller.
Claimed iPhone 8 case (middle) next to iPhone 7 (left) and iPhone 7 Plus case (right).
With 2012's iPhone 5, Apple made the display a tad taller without making it wider so that users could still reach corners at the top in one-handed mode. It took developers several months to update their apps to take full advantage of the new screen format. It follows that existing apps on an 18:9 iPhone would show black bars on the top and bottom of the screen.
At any rate, Google has urged developers to work with newer 18:9 aspect ratios for their apps and Apple is expected to do the same if iPhone 8 adopts the new screen format.
In other words, expect 18:9 to quickly become the new norm for smartphones.
As we reported before, iPhone 8 should manage to squeeze a 5.8-inch AMOLED panel (with an active display area measuring 5.1 inches) inside a chassis that would be just a little bit wider and a tad taller than the existing 4.7-inch iPhones.
Hopefully, Apple will achieve this by drastically reducing or eliminating the bezels and integrating the Home button, Touch ID, the camera and sensors into the display assembly.
Fun fact: the original iPhone had a screen aspect ratio of 3:2.
iPhone 8 mockup top of post via Benjamin Geskin.