News

9 August 2010

 

Taiwan GaAs foundries post further revenue growth in July

Taiwanese gallium arsenide foundries WIN Semiconductors Corp and Advanced Wireless Semiconductor Company (AWSC) have both reported continuing revenue growth for July, reports Digitimes.

WIN has raised its monthly revenue record again, from June’s NT$660m to NT$662m (US$20.83m) in July, up 44% year-on-year. This follows 41.1% year-on-year growth for second-quarter 2010.

Digitimes noted in May that the foundry has enjoyed growing demand from its integrated device manufacturer (IDM) customers, which have been turning to outsourcing due to cost considerations. It has also obtained new orders from China-based design houses.

WIN’s 6-inch GaAs capacity is about 12,000 wafer per month, but should rise to 14,000 by the end of 2010. In late June, shareholders approved a plan to issue 100 million new shares to raise funds for ramping up manufacturing capacity, while also soliciting equity investments from its upstream and downstream production partners, reported Digitimes at the time.

AWSC has reported a fifth consecutive month of record revenue, following 4.5% growth from May’s NT$156m to June’s NT$163m with 7.4% growth in July to NT$175m (US$5.5m). This follows quarterly growth of 17% from Q1’s NT$397.3m to NT$464m in Q2 (due mainly to increasing orders from GaAs device maker Skyworks Solutions Inc of Woburn, MA, USA).

To meet increasing demand, AWSC is planning to boost its 6-inch GaAs production capacity from 100–200 wafers per week in Q2/2010 to 400 wafers per week in Q4/2010 by adding a second production line. AWSC also said in January that it was expanding by migrating all of its 4-inch GaAs production lines (with a capacity of 1600–1700 wafers per week) to 6-inch wafers.

Compared to the particularly strong second quarter, sequential revenue growth for both GaAs foundries is expected to be more modest in Q3/2010, albeit still more than 10% due to continuing strong demand for power amplifiers (PAs) for wireless and, in particular, smartphone applications.

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Taiwan GaAs foundries WIN and AWSC expect further growth in June

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