Packaging and testing firm ChipMOS Technologies has revealed plans to place a greater emphasis on logic chips, expecting sales ratio for the segment to expand to 20-25% within the next three years from the current 10%.
ChipMOS has in recent years discontinued expanding its memory backend business, and shifted its focus to the logic IC segment, according to company chairman and CEO SJ Cheng. With more Japan-based IDMs looking to scale down their in-house manufacturing for cost reasons, ChipMOS expects to ride the wave of the increased outsourcing, said Cheng.
Through subsidiary Thailin Semiconductor's recently-forged partnership with Japan's Asahi Kasei Microdevices (AKM), ChipMOS has secured packaging orders for AKM products, Cheng indicated. ChipMOS will provide mainly wafer-level chip-scale package (WLCSP) services for the orders, Cheng said.
ChipMOS is also in talks with 3-4 IDMs for potential orders, Cheng added.
Thailin on November 22 entered a new long-term semiconductor testing service agreement with AKM, under which AKM will consign to Thailin certain sets of mixed-signal tester equipment and in return, Thailin will utilize the consigned equipment as dedicated capacity to provide semiconductor testing services to AKM.
The contract with AKM will allow Thailin's total sales of logic IC testing to account for as high as 60% by 2013, up from 30-40% at present, according to market observers. The pull-in of orders from AKM is also expected to boost Thailin's overall revenues for 2012 by 15%.
In addition to AKM, MStar Semiconductor and Novatek Microelectronics reportedly are among Thailin's major clients.
In other news, ChipMOS has set a capex budget of US$85-90 million for 2012, up from the US$77 million targeted for 2011, according to Cheng. The majority will be used to expand capacity for WLCSP and 12-inch bumping capacity.
ChipMOS is scheduled to grow wafer-level packaging capacity to 15,000 units a month in the third quarter of 2012, up from the current 5,000. As for 12-inch bumping, monthly capacity will climb to 16,000 units in the first quarter of 2012 from 8,000 at present.