Porsche Revving Up Manufacturing With 5G
Driving the future of the automotive industry: A research partnership between Ericsson and Porsche is leveraging the power of 5G to accelerate production capabilities at Porsche’s manufacturing production complex in Leipzig, Germany.
Interview With UTAC: Shaping 2019
Asia Pacific Metalworking Equipment News is pleased to conduct an interview with Asif Chowdhury, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Corporate Business Development at UTAC regarding UTAC’s achievements for 2018, the company’s aims for 2019, and the trends that will shape the industry in the following year.
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Can you sum up your company’s focus and achievements in 2018?
2018 has been a very good year for UTAC, especially with respect to winning some key strategic customer engagements which will likely drive revenue for years to come.
For example, UTAC has achieved a very key business win with a major fabless company involving WLCSP requiring leading-edge wafer process technology, which we are now in the process of developing and qualifying.
Furthermore, we have had major lead frame business off-load from one of the top Integrated Device Manufacturer (IDM)’s internal facility which was won this year. These are just some examples of the many key engagements that we have with IDMs and Fabless Semi companies.
Our automotive as well as industrial business continues to grow and we are in line with increasing our revenue for both of these market segments this year.
In 2018, we are also very proud of our significant market share gain in power packaging, which utilises Cu-Clip technology in our Thailand factory. The demand for these power devices have been growing due to the growth in cloud computing servers and also in the automotive space. We have also made very good progress in increasing our high-end MEMS packaging business with top major MEMS players in Europe. MEMS products continue to grow, driven by the growth in IoT, automotive and mobile applications.
We have also enjoyed the highest number of RFQs, (or Requests for Quotes for new business) in 2018 which is essentially a testament of potential pipeline business. We had a record number of automotive RFQ wins in the second quarter of 2018.
We are very pleased with our higher level of engagement with customers and growth in our focus areas in 2018 and beyond.
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What business trends in Asia capture your interest for growth next year?
The semiconductor sector is a very global business even though many of the activities, especially manufacturing, are focused here in Asia. With the waves of consolidations in recent years, one trend that UTAC follows in Asia is the consolidation of IDM factories located here.
The streamlining of manufacturing activities by IDM factories provides opportunities for OSATs to gain market share. In fact, UTAC’s last acquisition was three Panasonic assembly and test facilities in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. We will continue to follow and keep our eye on such trends, particularly in Asia.
Beyond that, we are also following the trade issues between the United States and China closely. With eight assembly and test manufacturing locations in Asia but outside China, we will be focused on taking advantage of or perhaps even help facilitate our customers who are looking to decrease their footprint for assembly and test in China if the tariffs continue.
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What do you think is the key industry trend to watch out for 2019?
As we exit in 2018, there are some concerns about how the semiconductor market will perform in 2019 and also perhaps in 2020. The industry has been enjoying consecutive growth for the past few years with double-digit growth in 2017 and also 2018. However, there is a sense of overall pessimism – which is apparent from the negative performance of many of the semiconductor companies’ stocks during the last month.
The memory market is cooling especially from a pricing standpoint both for DRAM and Flash. Additionally, even though the inventory level for IDMs and fabless companies have steadily come down, it is still on the high side. While the Q4 numbers are not out yet, we expect that the average inventory days will still be well over 100 days.
From the semiconductor market performance and overall market chatter, it seems like we might be going into a market slowdown in 2019 – the question is how significant this will be. Our industry is cyclic, however, the amplitude of these cycles has come down significantly since 2014. We are optimistic that even if 2019 turns out to be a down market, it will be a low single digit. We will be watching our customers’ forecasts and overall market demand very closely as we go into 2019.
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What potential and opportunities do you see in the semiconductor industry next year?
Despite the possible market slowdown, there will be pockets of opportunities in 2019 and beyond. Analog products continue to show the highest compound annual growth rate (CAGR), in the high single-digit through 2022 driven by demand for semiconductor products in the Automotive, Industrial, IoT market and Power products.
UTAC is well-positioned in all these segments with both packaging and test solutions. Automotive semiconductor products are estimated to grow by over 10% CAGR through 2022, especially with the potential of the proliferation of both electric and autonomous vehicles. Despite the current slowdown, we expect automotive semiconductor demand to continue to be relatively strong.
From a technology perspective, we will be keeping a close eye on the deployment of both 5G infrastructure and handsets towards the end of 2019. UTAC has been investing in the development of packaging and test technologies which are key for the 5G wave.
The server market will also continue to grow in 2019, fuelled by continuous demand in cloud computing. Our Cu-Clip power package solutions are well suited for this as well as automotive power application.
Finally, we are also keeping an eye on wafer technology such as silicon carbide (SiC) which could be a potential growth engine for the semiconductor industry.
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Interview With Jun Chie, Vice President & General Manager At Keysight
Asia Pacific Metalworking Equipment News is pleased to conduct an interview with Jun Chie, Vice President & General Manager at Keysight regarding Keysight’s achievements for 2018, the company’s aims for 2019 and the trends that will shape the industry next year.
Can you sum up your company’s focus and achievements in 2018?
Keysight’s focus in 2018 revolved around 5G technology, automotive & energy, network visibility.
Asia saw greater demand for research & development for 5G, particularly in the wireless ecosystem. We also saw a growth in data center next-generation 400GbE and high-speed digital tests.
Automotive & energy-related orders from our customers have also increased over the past two years. Additionally, driven by our robust 5G solutions, we are pleased that network security orders from our customers such as leading mobile operators in Japan, Korea, China and the United States have surged too.
Some key offerings Keysight launched in 2018 include PathWave and KeysightCare to enable customers to not only accelerate innovation and product development from concept through manufacturing and deployment but also offers design and test engineers dedicated, proactive support for instruments, software, and solutions. In 2019, Keysight will continue to transition from being a product-focused company to a solutions-led one, and our new solutions embody this move.
Our strength in network security has also extended to our visibility solutions, following the acquisition of Ixia in 2017. This has allowed for an expansion in both the depth and breadth of our portfolio. With the combined strength of Keysight and Ixia’s solutions in network testing, visibility, wireless and physical layer test and measurement, we can deliver full end-to-end solutions across the communications workflow for our customers.
What business trends in Asia are of interest to your company in 2019?
In 2019, we will continue to focus on these key areas in Asia – 5G, Automotive & Energy, Network Visibility.
Our broad portfolio of 5G solutions coupled with the engagement with leading market makers strengthens Keysight’s leading position in this fast-growing market. Countries like South Korea, Japan and Singapore are leading the way; with South Korea’s commercial roll-out of 5G services in this year. Operators in Japan are also trialling pilot services on schedule towards full 5G operation at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Singapore is no stranger to 5G as well. Companies and education institutions like Singtel, Ericsson and Singapore Polytechnic are partners in the development and build of a local 5G ecosystem. With the digital infrastructure in place, we will see an increase in commercial enterprises leveraging on 5G technologies for their services/products.
In terms of automotive and energy, Keysight believes that by 2025 every car on the road will be connected in some way. Access to wireless communication networks will be critical for safer and autonomous driving. More than ever, we are committed to work and serve customers to support innovative projects that will drive the automotive and energy industries. In fact, Keysight established four Automotive Customer Centres in the world, with the most recent center opened in January 2019 in Nagoya, Japan. The center includes customer electronic test and measurement labs, technical experts, and state-of-the-art test equipment, as well as a customer training facility for hands-on workshops and seminars.
What do you think is the key industry trend to watch out for 2019?
We are currently witnessing an unprecedented boom in data volumes following the proliferation of connected devices and the move from 4G to 5G communications.
By 2020, there will be 20 billion connected devices, with each individual predicted to be connected to an upwards of 10 devices, thus resulting in a predicted trillion gigabytes of stored data.
The huge data boom in turn spells tremendous growth potential in the 5G technology market – this data will require ultra-fast transmission and low latency rates that our current 4G technology is not equipped to handle.
5G connectivity is the solution to this. Autonomous driving is a case in point. In a sudden emergency-brake scenario, the safety features of the autonomous car system will immediately emit a real-time warning to vehicles that are following it to prevent a chain collision. To achieve this, the signals from the lead car must be received ultra-fast for the following cars to take the necessary action.
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