Japan's display and China and South Korea's competition have suffered the biggest loss

Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported on May 17th that JDI, a large-scale LCD company, was at a critical juncture in the rebuilding of its business. The company's consolidated financial statements for the fiscal year 2017 (as of March 2018) released on May 15 showed that the final profit and loss was a loss of 247.2 billion yen (a loss of 31.6 billion yen in 2016 fiscal year), making it the worst loss in history. Although the fiscal year 2018 (as of March 2019) is expected to become profitable, the competition between JDI and Chinese and South Korean companies has become increasingly fierce, and the road to reconstruction is still uncertain.

"The company that has become a profitable body through structural reforms", JDI President stressed the significance of the worst losses in history in the press conference held on the 15th. The main reason for the loss was the expansion of structural reforms. The loss of production equipment and inventory loss reached 143.7 billion yen.

However, due to the impact of four consecutive quarterly losses, the net assets that played a buffer role in sustaining losses were reduced to a total of 117 billion yen even after the April increase. The self-owned capital ratio, which shows security, fell to 17.8%.

What's more serious is the ability to earn cash. As major customers Apple iPhone X released in autumn 2017 using organic EL panels, JDI's LCD panel sales decreased. The operating cash flow showing the ability to earn cash from the main business was reduced by 700 million yen in FY2017 (an increase of 112 billion yen in fiscal year 2016). In 2017, the main business failed to make cash, and the capital turnover had to rely on financial institutions such as banks.

It is expected that JDI's sales in fiscal year 2018 will increase by 10-20% year-on-year, and its operating profit margin will be 2-3%. JDI Chief Financial Officer Oshima Takashi said that "the next fiscal year is expected to increase substantially." The company is looking forward to the new iPhone that Apple will release this fall. Due to the expectation that the shipment of LCD models will surpass that of organic EL models (the senior director of UK survey company IHS Markit), there is a voice in the market that “JDI will benefit from this”.

However, the competition between the current JDI and the Chinese panel makers whose technological capabilities are continuously improving is becoming more and more intensified. From January to March, sales to China mobile terminals accounted for 11% of JDI's total sales, which was a year-on-year decline of 18%.

The reason is that the demand for smart phone market in China is decelerating and the competition with Chinese panel makers is becoming increasingly fierce. Due to the "higher profit margin for panels for high-end smart phones in China than for Macs" (a senior analyst at UOB Securities, Nakayama Yasuo), these two factors have caused a huge blow to JDI.

In addition, China-US trade friction has also become a risk. The U.S. Department of Commerce has imposed sanctions on ZTE for prohibiting U.S. companies from trading with ZTE for the next seven years. ZTE smartphones have been forced to stop selling. The arrival of JDI President East indicated that the impact of ZTE’s sanctions on JDI sales amounted to “a few billion yen”. If the U.S. sanctions are extended to other Chinese manufacturers such as Huawei Technologies, the impact on JDI will further expand.

Get rid of the dependence on smart phones

On May 15th, JDI officially announced the personnel adjustment of Vice President Yoshizaki Yoshizaki. The former president of He Xiu Er will serve as a technical advisor. In order to realize the goal of turning profit and loss into profit in the 2018 fiscal year, the company will strengthen the vehicle-oriented business with the new system and get rid of the profit model that relies on smart phones.

Moonsaki will be the third president of JDI since its establishment in 2012 six years ago. JDI's senior personnel has always been in confusion. After the presidential election was announced in March 2017, it was withdrawn again in May, two months later. It should have served as president of the East to serve as the president, while President He Xiu has been re-elected.

Tsuyoshi Kawasaki served as the head of JDI's vehicle department as of March and has played a role in negotiations with European auto parts manufacturers. JDI's vehicle-mounted business such as instrumentation sales exceeded 100 billion yen for the first time in fiscal 2017. According to the British survey company IHS Markit, its global share ranks first.

The business of mobile terminals accounts for 80% of the total sales. The performance of JDI has been dominated by smart phones. In order to consolidate its profitability base, the company urgently needs to expand its in-vehicle operations that provide stable returns.

In addition, the organic EL business has also become a topic. In order to achieve mass production of organic EL panels, JDI has been exploring capital cooperation with Chinese companies, but negotiations on relevant conditions have reached an impasse and the deadline for the original deadline for March 2018 was postponed. The president of the East I.com.com reduced the tone, saying that "the trend of organic EL has changed, and the mass production investment with overseas partners will be judged on the basis of careful observation of the market."

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Multiple factors put pressure on Samsung Electronics shares fell 7 consecutively

According to reports, since the 50:1 stock split, Samsung Electronics' share price has been in a downward trend, which is completely contrary to the market's previous expectations. Before the market generally believed that Samsung Electronics will attract a large number of retail investors after the stock split, and promote its stock price rise.

In the May 15 intraday trading, Samsung Electronics shares fell for the seventh consecutive day, the lowest fell to 49,100 won.

Market analysts said Samsung’s management structure issues and Samsung’s involvement in accounting fraud are one of the factors that contributed to Samsung’s stock price decline, but the market’s negative outlook on the company’s core business is the culprit for the stock’s decline. .

"The second quarter is usually the off-season of the semiconductor industry, so it is difficult for IT companies to drive up share prices during this period," said Kim Byung-yeon, an analyst at investment and securities firm NH Investment & Securities.

According to financial data company FnGuide, the market is now unanimously expecting that the Korean tech giant’s operating profit in the second quarter will be 15.8 trillion won, which is 4.5% lower than the market’s previous forecast in January.

Due to some of the reasons for the decrease in market expectations, foreign investors sold a total of approximately 950,000 shares of the company in the first week after Samsung Electronics opened shares. After the stock split, Samsung Electronics' share price dropped from several million won to 53,000 won.

Some analysts expect Samsung Electronics' share price to rebound in the second half of the year as demand for high-end displays and semiconductors grows. For example, Apple allegedly plans to release the new iPhone in the second half of this year and adopt Samsung's OLED screen.

The South Korean government’s request that Samsung resolve its complex ownership structure also put pressure on the stock.

In a meeting with South Korea’s big corporate group CEO last week, Kim Sang-jo, head of the Korea Fair Trade Commission, criticized Samsung’s current management structure, which allows Samsung’s founding family members to control a handful of Samsung’s subsidiaries. The entire enterprise group.

Kim Sang-jo has been recommending that the Samsung Group establish two holding companies, a financial subsidiary that manages Samsung, and a non-financial subsidiary that includes Samsung Electronics, before serving as the top head of the Korean antitrust agency.

Recently, Kim Sang-jo asked Samsung to establish a new control structure to develop core management decisions and business strategies for its subsidiaries. He said that this allows Samsung to no longer need to set up a controlling entity.

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More and more Swedes are implanting microchips subcutaneously: solving life problems

In recent years, more and more Swedish "technology people" have chosen to implant chips in their skin to facilitate life. Because only a micrometer-sized microchip is needed, you can reduce the trivial things in your life, including taking keys, taking credit cards, and buying train tickets.
According to Singapore’s “Lianhe Zaobao” reported on May 14, from 2015, Sweden and some countries have implanted microchips using Near Field Communication Technology (NFC) in their bodies. Many Swedes who are passionate about new technologies have chosen the latter to worry about the leakage of personal data and the convenience of living. They regard the sharing of personal information as a sign of a transparent society. They actively participated in the use of microchips for the past few years, and there have been particularly few negative comments on the use of chips.
28-year-old Urrika Sekhin is one of the 3,000 Swedes who joined the scheme. She implanted chips on her hands and has a new life experience. Now, when she enters the office, she doesn't have to “punch.” Just wave a hand on the device and press the passcode to open the door. At the same time, the chip in her body not only became an "electronic wallet" but also replaced the gym's access card. She can also buy train tickets through the Internet, register tickets to the chip, and let the inspector scan the chip while on the train.
Swedes have long accepted to pass the identity card number and share personal data with other state administrative agencies. Sweden has always had a good record of personal information sharing. This may have “struck hard” for millions of people in the country, making them more acceptable to implant chips in the human body.
As for whether the chip will cause any security problems, Seh Xin said when interviewed, she did not worry about being monitored or the chip data was stolen by hackers. "I think that modern technology has not yet been able to achieve this, but it is difficult to predict the future, so I can make decisions at any time to take out the chip."
Microbiologist Ben Lilton believes that implanting a chip in the human body poses a certain risk because the chip can cause infection or react with the human immune system. "As the data collected by the chip increases rapidly, if the chip has problems, it will pose even greater risks to people."

From Your Cell Phone to Your Car: Future AI Chips Will Be Everywhere

According to CNET, Google may have foreseen the spread of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in applications, devices, and services, such as identifying a friend's face in a photo and giving a smart speaker a human-like voice. The good news is that the processor industry has also noticed this. This means that we will see a large number of new chips that not only can accelerate AI tasks on mobile phones or laptops, but also can appear on car or home security cameras.

(Figure 1: Google's second-generation TPU AI chip. Google uses artificial intelligence to provide services such as search, translation, and face detection, but its AI chip (ie, TPU, tensor processing unit) runs in the data center. Now, AI chips are expanding into smart phones, personal computers, automobiles, etc.)
This is just the latest progress made by AI. This seemingly all-encompassing term is often referred to as what is known as "machine learning" or "neural network" technology, which is established by simulating the human brain. When you train neural networks with real-world data, it can find spam, transcribe your voice messages into text messages or identify cats and other objects. This has brought dramatic changes to the design of rigid traditional computer programs.
AI will become ubiquitous. For example, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had testified in Congress for nearly 10 hours and he mentioned many potential AI solutions for dealing with fake accounts and misinformation. At the same time, AI is also a popular vocabulary used by handset makers such as Apple, Samsung and LG.
Linley Gwennap, chief analyst at the chip analysis firm Linley Group, said at the processor conference: "Most new high-end smartphones have AI accelerators, including the Apple iPhone X A11 chip and the Samsung Galaxy S9 Exynos 9810. We have seen As time goes by, AI is gradually being applied to mid-range handsets, and it may continue to flow to low-end handsets over time."
AI chips may not only be used on smart phones, thanks to the startup's custom chip design and efforts from mobile chip giant ARM's Trillium AI project. This means that today's computer intelligence revolution is only just beginning. It can eventually help Amazon and Google's digital assistants expand to new devices, let your car recognize pedestrians and everything around them, make your computer smarter and automatically take photos And editing and so on.
Take a web security camera as an example. It can make your home network and broadband connection a continuous video stream. Gwennap explained: “The camera you really wanted was able to see the scene and then said nothing happened and there was no need to upload a video. When a change happened, it could send an image or a notification.” Gwennap anticipates that the PC can be The relatively powerful main processor runs AI, but as more software uses this technology, they also get AI chips. Adobe Systems software like Photoshop and Premiere Pro has pushed the processor to the limit, and the company has introduced Sensei AI technology to accelerate tasks like photo editing.

(Figure 2: Various sensors will be installed on driverless cars, and chip companies such as Synopsys and GlobalFoundries are expected to sell processors capable of handling all data)
As the driverless technology advances, the car will gain AI brain. The company called Synopsys showed its way at the conference to manage the large amount of data collected from radar, laser radar, cameras and other driverless cars. Synopsys marketing manager Gordon Cooper said: "Apple implanted neural network in iPhone X. Now everyone wants to have neural network function."
Today, smart speakers like Amazon Echo or Google Home are at the forefront of AI, but most of their “brains” rely on web links. Gwennap said that the built-in AI chips allow them to understand your voice commands faster, which is an important improvement, because no one likes to delay when ordering new music or turning the lights off.
In the field of drones, AI will mean more powerful capabilities, such as avoiding obstacles in flight, or tracking a moving object. For example, walk down a ski slope so that you can take action videos to the next level.
For the chip industry that has suffered from the rapid development of Moore’s Law, the addition of AI has brought a fresh air. Today, new laptops may not look much faster than they were five years ago, but with the advent of AI chips, you may have reason to upgrade again.

Qualcomm Says First 5G Smartphones Will Be Launched During the Year

According to foreign media reports, Durga Malladi, senior vice president of Qualcomm, said in an interview that the first batch of 5G smart phones will be launched this year, not 2019.

He said that although most operators and equipment manufacturers plan to launch 5G mobile phones next year, some ambitious players will be the first to introduce 5G-compliant smartphones later this year, offering twice or four times the 4G LTE speed. The data transmission speed of the device.

"Actually, some operators have already launched (pioneering) 5G services, and plan to commercialize them later this year. We will do our best to help them," said Marady.

Right now, operators are determining the speed of support for early 5G devices. Marradi said: "Operators believe that they can support the speed of 1 to 4.5 Gbps, depending on the broadband they use. In addition, operators generally want to start from 2 or 4 Gbps, is the latest 4G LTE technology peak Two to four times, "Qualcomm said earlier, when 5G is not available, LTE will serve as a backup network, providing about 1GB of speed.

The 5G speed is expected to surprise users, especially in downtown areas. Based on tests in cities such as San Francisco, "about 50% of users get a speed of about 1.4GB/sec, which will change the way you do things," said Marady.

He said that when the user's laptop or tablet has such a speed, "your consumption will change significantly." He pointed out that providing such a speed for mobile and portable devices, providing homes for desktops and televisions The engineering challenge of fixing 5G broadband services is simpler.

Qualcomm said in January this year that it plans to display its first 5G mobile phone at the CES Consumer Electronics Show next year. However, due to pressure from operators and equipment manufacturers, this timetable has been advanced several months.

It turned out that the crystal played this role in the circuit!

The full name of Crystal is also called the Crystalz oscillator. It is like the heart of the human body. It is sacred and beautiful and plays a vital part.
The role of the crystal oscillator is to provide the system with a basic clock signal. Usually a system uses a crystal to facilitate the synchronization of the parts. Some communication systems use different crystals for the fundamental frequency and radio frequency, and they keep pace by adjusting the frequency electronically.

The following is the introduction of crystal technology in the circuit for you in Imperial Science and Technology. Crystal generally uses the three-terminal capacitor (Cabitex) AC equivalent oscillator circuit shown in Figure 1a; the actual crystal oscillator AC equivalent circuit is shown in Figure 1b, where Cv is Used to adjust the oscillation frequency, generally using a varactor diode with a different reverse bias voltage to achieve, which is also known as the pressure control for the analysis of the entire tank circuit, the use of Cv to change the frequency is limited: the entire tank capacitance to determine the oscillation frequency After three capacitors C=Cbe, Cce, and Cv are connected in series with Co, they are connected in series with C1. It can be seen that the smaller C1 is, the larger Co is, and the smaller the effect of Cv on the capacitance of the entire tank circuit is. Therefore, the frequency range of "voltage control" is also smaller. In fact, because C1 is small (1E-15 scale), Co cannot be ignored (1E-12 magnitude, a few PF). Therefore, when Cv becomes larger, the effect of reducing the channel frequency becomes smaller and smaller, and when Cv becomes smaller, the effect of increasing the channel frequency becomes larger and larger. On the one hand, this results in nonlinearity in the voltage control characteristics. The larger the voltage control range, the greater the nonlinearity.

On the other hand, the feedback voltage that distributes the oscillation (the voltage on Cbe) is getting smaller and smaller, eventually resulting in stoppage of vibration. Through the schematic of the crystal oscillator, you should have a general understanding of the role of the crystal oscillator and the working process. Using a crystal with a higher number of harmonics, the equivalent capacitance C1 is smaller; therefore, the frequency variation range is smaller. Even if the quartz crystal can play a stable start-up characteristic under extremely harsh environmental conditions, the product itself has excellent heat resistance, vibration resistance, impact resistance and other environmental resistance characteristics, to meet the lead-free soldering and high temperature reflow temperature curve requirements, in full compliance with AEC -Q200 standard.

Chip wars: Tech rivalry underlies US China trade conflict

Chinese and American officials will be trying to defuse tensions pushing the world’s two largest economies toward trade war in meetings beginning Thursday where analysts say chances for a breakthrough seem slim given the two sides’ desperate rivalry in strategic technologies. 

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and other U.S. officials including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer arrived Thursday for the talks in Beijing. Liu He, President Xi Jinping’s top economic adviser, is heading the Chinese side in the talks.

President Donald Trump said he expected relations with Beijing to remain smooth.

“Our great financial team is in China trying to negotiate a level playing field on trade!” he said on Twitter late Wednesday. “I look forward to being with President Xi in the not too distant future. We will always have a good (great) relationship!”

Overtake western industry leaders in advanced technologies

Regardless of the huge U.S. trade deficit often decried by Trump, Chinese companies are struggling to overtake western industry leaders in advanced technologies, especially for semiconductors, the silicon brains required to run smartphones, connected cars, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

Under Xi, a program known as “Made in China 2025” aims to make China a tech superpower by advancing development of industries that in addition to semiconductors includes artificial intelligence, pharmaceuticals and electric vehicles. The plan mostly involves subsidizing Chinese firms. But it also requires foreign companies to provide key details about their technology to Chinese partners.

Beijing looks unlikely to cede any ground on that strategic blueprint.

“The Made in China 2025 industrial policy concerns China’s long-term development plan, so the overall direction won’t change at all,” said Yu Miaojie, professor at Peking University’s National School of Development. Yu says China would rather cut the trade deficit by importing high-tech products from the U.S. that are currently tightly restricted.

U.S firms gripe that Chinese policies compel them to share technologies in order to gain market access. Those complaints bely Beijing’s decades-long, still unsuccessful struggle to catch up, especially in the area of semiconductors. Washington’s recent decision to ban Chinese telecom gear maker ZTE from importing U.S. components in a sanctions-related case drove home to Beijing its costly vulnerability to foreign sources for advanced microchips. The Trump administration’s efforts may actually spur China to ramp up efforts to develop its domestic industry as it strives to fulfil Xi’s vision, said Jian-Hong Lin, an analyst at research firm TrendForce.

China determined to realize self-reliance in semiconductor technology

China will be even more determined “to realize self-reliance in semiconductor technology,” he said. The “Made in China 2025” plan calls for domestic producers to supply 70 per cent of the country’s chip demand. China now consumes nearly 60 per cent of the world’s semiconductors but supplies only about 16 per cent, according to PWC. The country spends more than $200 billion a year on foreign-made semiconductors, which in 2015 surpassed crude oil as the country’s biggest import.

Experts say increasingly high technological hurdles and a meagre talent pool are hindering the effort to catch up with dominant U.S., Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese manufacturers. They say Chinese chipmakers are five years behind their U.S. and Asian rivals when it comes to leading edge chip technology, and have made no progress in recent years. Those advanced chips are highly complex to make because of their increasingly tiny “nodes,” measured in nanometers, that make them faster and more power-efficient.

And even as Chinese researchers and chipmakers strive to catch up, the technology is evolving, with new materials transforming the future landscape of the electronics industry. Larry Kudlow, Trump’s economic adviser, is among those due to join the meetings in Beijing. He has acknowledged it would take time to persuade China to let U.S. companies compete in the Chinese market without being forced to surrender their technological know-how.

Still, Beijing is backing up its towering ambitions in the semiconductor sector with money and tax breaks. The government set up the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund in 2014, seeded with 140 billion yuan ($22 billion) in capital to invest in chip companies. A second round of fundraising for as much as 200 billion yuan is underway, Chinese media report. The state-controlled Tsinghua Unigroup project, associated with Tsinghua University _ China’s equivalent of MIT _ emerged as a national champion after buying two Chinese chip design firms, Spreadtrum and RDA Microelectronics in 2013. It’s building two massive memory chip factories, including a $30 billion facility in Nanjing that will churn out 100,000 wafers a month and is expected to exert a “siphon effect,” drawing microchip industry suppliers and experts to the area.

It’s unclear how successful those efforts will be

One of Beijing’s strategies, acquiring overseas chipmaking-related firms, has faced resistance from foreign regulators. Washington has scuppered multiple China-linked bids for semiconductor-related firms _ a trend that began about the same time that a White House advisory panel urged in January last year, before President Donald Trump took office, more protections for the industry because of China’s industrial policies. Market leaders like Samsung and Intel each command about 14 per cent of the global memory chip market, according to Gartner research. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, South Korea’s Hynix, Micron Technology and Qualcomm of the U.S. and Japan’s Toshiba also are major chipmakers.

“Even though they’ve committed a lot of money to the investment fund, the reality has sunk in that it’s harder than just throwing money at the problem. The Samsungs of the world, the TSMCs have a large head start,” said Alexander Wolf, an economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments. “Certain products, you can’t really reverse engineer.”

While some companies like Huawei and ZTE are avidly pursuing advanced semiconductor technology, experts say overall Chinese research and development spending is a fraction of the multibillion-dollar budgets of the big players. That’s one reason Beijing’s success is anything but a given.

“These things are built from thousands of engineers of different disciplines pulling it together,” said Christopher Thomas, a Beijing-based partner at consulting firm McKinsey, who estimates it will take a decade for China’s efforts to result in any meaningful shift. “You’ve got to solve all the complexity to catch up. You can’t just solve one thing.”

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AP writer Gillian Wong and researcher Yu Bing contributed to this report from Beijing.

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