Memory module supplier Adata Technology Co (威剛科技) is to unveil its first voice-controlled speaker at next week’s Computex Taipei, the company said yesterday, in its latest move to diversify into the artificial intelligence (AI) business.
The New Taipei City-based company plans to release the first batch of the smart speakers, which respond to Mandarin speech, next quarter in Taiwan and China in collaboration with Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Adata chairman Simon Chen (陳立白) told reporters.
“With Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴), Baidu Inc (百度) and Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) pushing to sell their own voice-controlled speakers, there will be explosive growth in demand from Chinese-speaking communities from the fourth quarter of this year,” Chen said.
The affordable price tag is a factor behind the favorable growth prospects for Adata’s voice-activated AI device, Chen said.
Adata is well-positioned to benefit from the rapidly growing demand for such voice assistants in Chinese-speaking communities, where established players, such as Amazon.com Inc and Google, are absent due to the high barrier of entry posed by Chinese speech recognition, he said.
Google Home and Amazon Alexa support a number of languages, but not Mandarin.
Adata aims to capture the top spot in the local smart speaker market, Chen said.
Adata chose global chipmakers over Hsinchu-based MediaTek Inc (聯發科) to supply chips for its first-generation of smart speakers, but it would use MediaTek chips in its next-generation AI assistant devices, the company said.
MediaTek is the world’s biggest chip supplier for smart speakers with a more than 70 percent market share. The company counts Google LLC and Amazon.com as its major clients.
Commenting on Adata’s core memory module businesses, Chen said the company’s profit would climb quarterly this year as DRAM chip prices are expected to remain flat, or increase slightly in the second half due to seasonal demand.
Chen said he is optimistic about the DRAM market’s outlook this year and next year, given healthy demand-supply dynamics.
DRAM for servers are to see the strongest demand among three major segments, and the strength would carry into the next one to two years, he said.
Demand from mobile phone makers is also on the rise, as this year’s models have much bigger memory space than last year’s, Chen said.
Significant growth in DRAM chips used in gaming PCs would help stabilize standard DRAM chip demand, he added.
DRAM modules contributed about 54 percent to Adata’s revenue of NT$32.23 billion (US$1.07 billion) last year, up from 38 percent in 2016.
Solid-state drives for PCs, micro SD cards and flash memory cards, which contain NAND flash memory chips, made up about 20 percent of total revenue.
Prices of NAND flash memory chips are likely to stabilize in the remainder of this year, given weakening oversupply pressure, Chen said.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
RSS