January 20, 2020 by Luke James
Taiwan-based companies Tong Hsing Electronic Industries Ltd and Kingpark Technology have announced plans to merge, seeking to achieve economies of scale by leveraging a wide product portfolio in the Taiwan marketplace and beyond.
Market reports indicate that 60% of the CIS market is dominated by smartphones. CIS automotive markets have continued their growth trajectory at a rate of 30% every year. This merger deal will see Tong Hsing Electronic Industries Ltd and Kingpark Technology turn into Taiwan’s heavyweight CIS packagers, and indeed one of the largest packaging companies in the world.
Both companies are eyeing for diversified segments in the economy, including advanced driving, Internet of Things (IoT), Internet of Vehicles (IoV), the augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) markets as well as the smartphone sector.
Tong Hsing is a world leader in the assembly and testing of micro modules as well as custom semiconductor packaging. The veteran semiconductor company has, since its inception in 1975, been focusing on the provision of high-end microelectronic packaging technology. It targets multiple industries that manufacture various components such as fiber optics, LEDs, sensors, automotive electronics, wireless communications, medical and network equipment, computer peripherals, among others.
The Longtan branch of Tong Hsing. Image Credit: Tong Hsing.
CIS packager Kingpak Technology fully ventured into the niche CIS (CMOS Image Sensor) micro packaging space in 1999, although the firm’s history traces back to 1997. The company’s packaging technology mainly targeted wearable products, consumer products, and, video testing services, as well as safety monitoring and automotive CIS packages.
Kingpak Technology’s strong foundation in electronics packaging fields has come through years and years of high-quality research, the bringing together of unmatched manufacturing talent, global collaborations with its clients, and the securing of ISO9001\ISO14001 certifications.
The collaboration of these two companies is happening at a time when LPDDR5 is expected to become the new mainstream memory for 5G smartphones in 2020. According to reliable sources, Samsung’s LPDDR5 mobile DRAM will be expected to feature in its 5G smartphones for 2020 as Samsung keeps going for the CIS market.
It also happens at a time when China has vowed to replace all PCs used in the government sector with locally manufactured hardware, Chinese-based CPU developers have been forced to step up their efforts in rolling out processor updates to meet the government's newly set standards.
One such developer is the Chinese company Loongson that recently announced the launch of its latest 3A4000 series processor. According to the developer these processors were created without the use of a third party's intellectual property (IP) assets except the design tools offered by the chipmaker during the development stage.
Other examples include SMIC, Yangtse Memories, and ChangXin Memory, companies that are all reported to be expanding capacity and moving towards the production of more advanced 14nm chips this year.
