IC Assembly Houses in Taiwan See Robust Business

(June 22, 2009) TAIPEI, Taiwan &#151 Taiwan’s IC assembly firms are seeing revenues rise quarterly, with Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. (ASE) and Siliconware Precision Industry Co. Ltd. expected to see respective revenues rise 50% this quarter and at least 20% next quarter, reports China Economic News Service (CENS) writer Ken Liu.

The watchers attribute the brisk business mostly to surging output at pure silicon foundries and increased outsourcing contracts from integrated device manufacturers (IDMs). Both types of chipmakers have increasingly outsourced test and packaging work to dedicated IC assemblers.

They pointed out that IDMs like Intel, Micron Technology, NEC and Renesas Tech have been increasing packaging and test outsourcing to dedicated firms after beginning to wind down their own chip assembly lines to pare down costs, reports CENS.

Lui states that Intel has contracted ASE and Siliconware to package and test its south-bridge chips, Ethernet chips, wireless chips, NAND flash chips, adding that the chip assemblers are expected to land 15% more of Intel’s contracts next quarter over the last.

Contracts from silicon foundries are estimated to boost revenues at assemblers by 10% next quarter based on the projections that the foundries would see revenues rise 10%, on average, in the same quarter thanks to increased contracts from IDMs and fabless houses including Qualcomm and Nvidia

CENS cites industry executives, asserting that, unlike most electronics manufacturers, which had seen their May revenue rebound after declining in April, IC assemblers would likely further grow this month after rising in April and May.

They said that assemblers specializing in test and packaging of LCD drive ICs would have the most promising outlook in the assemble industry. In Taiwan, the assemblers include Chipbond Technology Corp., International Semiconductor Technology Ltd., and Kyec Yuan Electronics Co. Ltd.

POST A COMMENT

Easily post a comment below using your Linkedin, Twitter, Google or Facebook account. Comments won't automatically be posted to your social media accounts unless you select to share.