Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC)
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Chinese chipmaker slumps on debut
China's largest chipmaker had a rough debut in New York and Hong Kong as shares tumbled on concerns about the veracity of its accounting. Shares of Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) fell 11% in the US and slumped 7% in Hong Kong. Investors were spooked by the company admitting its chief financial officer had made "inaccurate statements". Thursday's wobble may impact on the other Chinese companies planning to list on foreign exchanges this year. Accounting concerns While analysts expect demand to remain strong, they said that investors may now not be willing to pay such high prices to tap into one of the world's fastest growing economies. Especially as China Life, 2003's biggest flotation, has revealed accounting irregularities at its state-owned predecessor worth more than $600m. Having said that, 2004 promises to be a bumper year for Chinese companies with almost $23bn-worth of share sales planned. Among the companies attempting to lure foreign investors are phone company China Netcom, China Construction Bank, Air China, China Power and carmaker Dongfeng Motor. Most investors, meanwhile, seem to be aware that buying into Chinese companies can be risky because accounting regulations are often less stringent than in the US and Europe. "I am not very disappointed because these things do happen," said Wong Kam-yung, who bought SMIC shares in the public offering. "I am going to wait a bit to see if it will rebound. The quality of the company is not bad." SMIC's US-listed shares closed at $15.50 in New York and at HK$2.50 in Hong Kong.
NB-IoT to turn 'smart parking' into reality
An applicable technology solution is about to hit the market as the nation's rapidly increased number of drivers gets a thirst for an upgrade of parking lot capabilities. Narrow Band Internet of Things, or NB-IoT, is a Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) technology that enables the connections between IoT devices generate faster speed and wider range than the existing Blue Tooth and Wi-Fi approaches while consume lower power and cost in the same time. Shen Zhou, engineer at the IoT business support center of China Unicom Shanghai Branch told China Daily the "NB-IoT"- driven smart parking solution would reduce the cost of the establishment and management of infrastructures and trunk gateways (TGs), which were originally used as data connectors to bridge information between end user terminal servers and upper servers. Shen said the traditional TGs were only able to manage a maximum of 10 end user parking terminals while the volume could be significantly enhanced thanks to the chipsets that embedded beneath the surface at the parking areas. He also expressed his optimism about the future implementation of NB-IoT to upgrade Shanghai's public parking lot services. "Following the improvement and utilization of NB-IoT, more public parking facilities are expected to be seen with responsent chipset embedded into ground," Shen said. In addition, some spare enterprises-own or private parking lots of individuals will also be revitalized to participate the network and enjoy profit sharing from the business. Statistics from local media noted that there are 15 NB-IoT base stations have been jointly built by Huawei and China Unicom at the Shanghai International Tourism and Resorts Zone, providing 334 parking booths that equipped with NB-IoT chipset and accessional vehicle detectors, aims at resolving tourists' difficulties in finding parking spaces and relieve traffic pressure. By connecting the data between individual vehicles and China Unicom's smart parking server on the cloud, end users are able to search for, reserve, navigate and even pay for, available parking spaces through an all-in-one app, which can be downloaded to a smartphone. Zhong Bo, senior developer of Ericsson's R&D North East Asia said that the technology allows telecom operators to play a more significant role in the IoT ecosystem and explore more growth areas, by partnering with device manufacturers and industrial users, and leveraging existing network infrastructure. The Swedish-based company has been partnered with world's major telecom operators to provide NB-IoT infrastructure, and it demonstrated world's first standard NB-IoT connection application at the Mobile World Congress Asia 2016 in July in Shanghai. "The NB-IoT technology can simplify the deployment of the smart parking solution, and can easily consolidate information of several different garages/parking lots into a single platform," said Zhong. "This can significantly facilitate end-users' parking process, and make the management and utilization of the parking area much more efficient." Zhong said there is no technology obstacle for the development of NB-IoT while it still takes some time for the modem manufacturers to produce mature standardized chipset. Ulf Ewaldsson, senior vice president, group CTO and head of group function technology at Ericsson, said the advantages of NB-IoT was that by using the existing infrastructures such a as networks and base stations, the technology will be acceptable by most of telecommunication operators only after software updates and improvements. He believes that the current implementation bottleneck of NB-IoT is the research and development process of chipsets that embedded in the associated terminals, and as more and more counties and regions around world are attracted by the tech, chip vendors will accelerate to meet customers' demands. As one of the contributors to the NB-IoT Standards, another Chinese major telecommunications provider, ZTE Corporation, also offers end-to-end solutions for operators and the industry and has actively invested in the research on chips, terminals, systems and IoT platforms. The company recently exported the technology to Romania and helped the nation establish its first smart parking lot in the west city Timisoara. NB-IoT technology firstly drawn attention by the industry back in March last year, as Vodafone together with Huawei demoed a smart meter application that enabled by the technology at the annual Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona, Spain. Chinese companies Huawei, ZTE, China Mobile and China Unicom, along with other world's leading telecom technology providers and operators, including Ericsson, Etisalat, the GSMA, GTI, Intel, LG Uplus, Nokia, Qualcomm Inc, Telecom Italia, Telefonica and Vodafone, joined NB-IoT Forum, have laid the foundations for a new industry forum aimed at accelerating two ecosystems around NB-IoT technology, including ecosystem in telecommunication industry and ecosystem in the cooperation of vertical market. In the mid of June this year, 3GPP (The 3rd Generation Partnership Project) completed the global standardization of NB-IoT in a plenary meeting in Busan, South Korea. "Internet of Things (IoT) is considered as an emerging industry with the most development potential due to the technology improved achieved in the areas such as mobile internet and big data," said Wang Xi, director of Shanghai Institute of Microsystem And Information Technology of Chinese Academy of Sciences. "Reliable business models of IoT market were not appeared until the born of NB-IoT." Apart from the smart parking use case that we promoted as a demonstration of concept, NB-IoT has a great number of applications in the market area of Smart City, including environment, traffic, health care and public security. "As the strategy of 'Made in China 2025' being further initiated and given the development space that provided by the replacement from export chipsets to domestic-made products, the integrated circuit sector will welcome a hundred-billion-yuan-level business opportunity, especially in the fields such as NB-IoT and 5G," said Xu Tianshen, senior vice president of global markets of Shanghai-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC). Technology research company Gartner Group said it expected 6.4 billion connected devices to be in use next year, up 30 percent from this year, with the number reaching 20.8 billion by 2020. According to the company, IoT services spending will grow 22 percent to $235 billion in 2016. CCID think tank, an consulting institution direct affiliate to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of China's IoT market scale increased 30.5 percent from 195.8 billion yuan to 567.9 billion yuan in four years from 2010 to 2014. The organization also expected that the global CAGR of IoT will witness 61 percent growth in five years and become the largest market for IT equipments and services.
Piotech plans hefty sales, eyeing IPO
Experts say the revitalization of China's northeast depends on innovative industry Piotech Co Ltd, China's leading nano-scale semiconductor equipment manufacturer, expects this year's sales to double, reaching 90 million yuan ($13.57 million), according to a senior official from the company. Chien Chiang, chairman and founder of Piotech, told China Daily that annual sales will continue high-speed growth this year and that the company plans to go public in three years. Piotech, based in the industrial base of northeast China's Liaoning province, makes plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition equipment used to manufacture nano-scale semiconductors. It was established by a group of returning international technology veterans, along with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, almost 10 years ago. The company develops innovative advanced PECVD equipment to help global semiconductor manufacturers build integrated circuit devices. Its PECVD product has been qualified for production by two China-based foundries－Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation and Wuhan Xinxin Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation. "Piotech's equipment is as good as its international counterparts even though it is a new player in the field. We are expecting to work closer with the company," said Zhang Xin, vice-president of SMIC, the largest and most advanced foundry in China. Moreover, Chiang disclosed that the company will move to a new plant this October and expand annual production capacity up to 300 sets. Piotech will develop next-generation products in the new plant. The construction of 150-million-yuan new factory is also somewhat iconic of the company's promising future and China's two trillion yuan semiconductor market. In fact, due to Piotech's great potential, China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Co Ltd, together with two other companies, invested 270 million yuan in the company late last year. Piotech is only one of the promising companies in the Shenyang High-tech Development Zone. A source from the local government shows that it houses 136 high-tech companies, including Siasun Robot & Automation Co, Neusoft Medical Systems Co Ltd and Liaoning Chengda Biopharmaceutical Co Ltd. Local authorities announced that the zone will focus on IC equipment, robotic and intelligent manufacturing and civil aviation. "Our high-tech companies are the innovation engine of the city. They are not so big at present, but represent the trend of the future," said Lyu Fan from the development zone. Shenyang is the traditional manufacturing base of China with the great advantage of abundant technical workers and an industrial culture. Its mechanical industry contributed almost half of industrial output last year. "The key to revitalizing the old northeastern industrial base is taking full advantage of manufacturing industry, especially by cooperating with Germany to build a high-tech manufacturing base," said Zhang Zhanbin, a researcher at the Revitalizing Northeast China Academy.
Knowledge Graph
Examples
1 The tech park is home to Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), the world's fourth largest chipmaker with $2.2 billion in 2015 revenue.
2 The jobs were high-end ones provided by leading companies, including Sino, Ted pharmaceutical, SMC, SMIC and many others.
3 Zhang Xin, the vice-president of SMIC (Beijing), highlighted monitoring equipment, wearable devices and intelligent home systems as targets of expansion, as strong quarterly revenues were unveiled on Friday which showed the company is still enjoying robust growth, despite a slowing semiconductor market.