The sharp upswing in prices of mobile DRAM products is expected to hold back the growth of average per device memory content for smartphones this year, says the market intelligence firm TrendForce. Furthermore, TrendForce has lowered the estimated average memory content of smartphones for 2017, from 3.7GB to 3.2GB. The revised average memory content figure represents an increase of 33.4% compared with the 2016 figure.
Among the possible new technologies to be incorporated in this year’s refresh of the iPhone series, 3D sensing has generated a lot of interests in terms of applications. A 3D sensing solution requires an RGB camera module an infrared (IR) sensor module that uses VCSEL (vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser) as a light source. With more high-end smartphones adopt 3D sensing, TrendForce estimates that the worldwide market scale of IR sensor modules for mobile devices will reach US$145 million in 2017.
The global market for breast cancer drugs is growing steadily due to rising patient population, introduction of new drugs and sales growth of Perjeta and Kadcyla. The latest biotechnology market report from TrendForce states that the global market scale of breast cancer drugs reached US$11.97 billion in 2016 and is forecast to expand at a CAGR of 9.3% to US$22.35 billion in 2023.
Intel has made waves in the server SSD market with the reveal of its Optane SSD DC P4800X Series this March. Based the company’s in-house 3D XPoint memory, the DC P4800X Series is scheduled for shipments in the second half of 2017. “3D XPoint greatly outperforms NAND Flash and will help Intel reinforce its leading position in the high-end segment of the SSD market that has become increasingly competitive,” said Alan Chen, senior research manager of DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce. “In the future, the product roadmap of 3D XPoint could include client-grade SSDs and storage-class memory (SCM) devices. Intel naturally wants to expand the adoption of this technology in other areas as to create flexibility in pricing and consumption of in-house production capacity.”
Global smartphone production volume for the first quarter of 2017 totaled 307 million units, a drop of 23% from the previous quarter, according to market intelligence firm TrendForce. Smartphone brands, especially those based in China, lowered their production volume forecasts through the first quarter as demand slowed down significantly due to the conventional seasonal effect.