U.S. sapphire furnace and sapphire manufacturer GTAT, the primary sapphire supplier to Apple, filed for bankruptcy on October 6. As of September 29, GTAT reported having US$85 million in cash. Under the US$578 million multi-year agreement GTAT and Apple signed last November, GTAT must supply a certain volume of sapphire ingots to Apple while Apple was to pay GTAT in four installments with the final US$139 million payment scheduled for the end of October. But low sapphire yield rates have made Apple withhold the last payment.
Samsung Electronics plans to build a new semiconductor plant in South Korea at a cost of Won15.6tn ($14.7bn) to meet burgeoning demand for chips used in mobile devices. Construction of the chip-making plant, which will be the largest of its kind globally, will begin in the first half of 2015 and be completed in the second half of 2017, Samsung said.
n the past, Europe accounted for the greatest share of global solar demand and dictated the market’s movements, but as the Asia-Pacific market fast expands, China and Japan are playing a much larger role. Demand from those two Asian countries usually rises sharply in the fourth quarter and carries through to the first quarter of the following year.