Taiwan fabless IC firms seeing ramp-up of orders from China

Taiwan-based IC design houses have seen orders placed by their China-based smartphone customers ramp up for the second quarter, with demand coming from China's first-tier smartphone vendors being particularly strong, according to industry sources.

Taiwan-based fabless firms are expected to see orders from China's first-tier smartphone companies including Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi and Gionee ramp up as much as 30% sequentially for the second quarter, said the sources.

Meanwhile, chip orders from China's second-tier and lower smartphone players for the second quarter will see up to 10% growth sequentially, the sources indicated. In fact, China-based smartphone companies with smaller scales have been hit by shortages of memory, panel and other key components in recent months, losing competitiveness against their larger peers, the sources said.

Taiwan-based IC firms have generally predicted a 15-25% sequential increase in the overall demand for Android smartphones in the second quarter of 2017, the sources suggested.

In other news, the top-five China-based smartphone vendors continue to expand their local presence in China. In 2017, the players are set to collectively take a more than 70% share of the China smartphone market, according to sources at Taiwan's IC design industry.

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