Global July semiconductor revenue increased 4.9% year on year to $35.2 billion, up 2.1% sequentially, reported the Semiconductor Industry Association Thursday. The global industry “has remained largely resistant to global macroeconomic headwinds” -- “but substantial market uncertainty remains for the rest of the year,” said SIA. Sales into the Americas in July rose 26% year on year.

Qualcomm announced the 732G platform, with stepped-up graphics and processing performance for mobile gaming, as a follow-on to the Snapdragon 730G platform. The artificial intelligence-based 732G has a clock speed of up to 2.3 GHz, vs. 2.2 GHz for the standard platform, with a 15% graphics rendering improvement, said the company Monday. Users will experience more realistic game play in more than a billion shades of color, it said. An upcoming smartphone from Poco will be the first to use the chipset.

June semiconductor sales increased 5.1% from a year earlier to $34.5 billion, but down 0.3% from May, reported the Semiconductor Industry Association Monday. Q2 sales of $103.6 billion were up 5.1% from the 2019 quarter but down 0.9% from Q1, said SIA. “Significant uncertainty remains for the second half of the year due to ongoing macroeconomic headwinds,” said CEO John Neuffer, “Sales into the Americas stood out in June,” rising 29% year over year, he said.

Qualcomm said Monday it’s sampling Quick Charge 5 with customers, calling it the fastest commercial charging technology available for Android devices. It has new battery technologies, accessories and safety features, said the company. Devices can be charged from 0 to 50% in five minutes. It supports up to 100 watts charging power. Quick Charge 5 is supported on Snapdragon 865, 865 Plus, and future premium- and high-tier Snapdragon mobile platforms. It is expected to be in market in Q3.

Apple’s announcement this week it's moving away from Intel microprocessors in Mac computers by year-end, switching to its own processors used in the iPhone and iPad (see report, June 23), could be part of a larger shift in information technology leadership, blogged Bret Swanson, American Enterprise Institute visiting fellow. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. -- the largest contract manufacturer of chips for “fabless” semiconductor firms, such as Apple, Amazon, Qualcomm and Nvidia -- announced plans to build a $12 billion chip fab in Arizona, which could help alleviate a supply-chain worry: overdependence on Taiwan for chip manufacturing, Swanson said Wednesday. Though the U.S. is home to tech firms that design 65% of the world’s fabless chip volume, it has 10% of worldwide foundry capacity for manufacturing, he said. TSMC was first to reach the 7 nanometer process threshold, while Intel’s similar effort is reportedly delayed. Intel has an additional challenge: Apple and Amazon are using the alternative ARM architecture, not Intel’s x86, the dominant desktop and server architecture since the late 1970s, Swanson noted. TSMC’s Arizona investment provides not only “supply-chain resilience but also an overall boost to America’s bleeding-edge info-tech leadership,” he said. An Intel spokesperson emailed Wednesday that its 7-nanometer process "remains on track" with first products due by the end of 2021. On Apple's decision to move to its own processors, she said: "Apple is a customer across several areas of business, and we will continue to support them. Intel remains focused on delivering the most advanced PC experiences and a wide range of technology choices that redefine computing. We believe Intel-powered PCs -- like those based on our forthcoming Tiger Lake mobile platform -- provide global customers the best experience in the areas they value most, as well as the most open platform for developers, both today and into the future."

Samsung broke ground last month on a facility in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, that will expand its NAND flash production capacity, it said Tuesday. It expects to be in mass production of V-NAND memory, introduced in July, in second half 2021. The added capacity addresses mid- to long-term demands for NAND flash memory, it said.

Samsung's latest stand-alone turnkey security system offers protection for booting, isolated storage and mobile payments, it said Tuesday. The chip is Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 6+ certified, it said. Consumers expect smartphones to be highly secure to protect personal data and enable mobile banking, stock trading and cryptocurrency transactions, said Dongho Shin, Samsung senior vice president-system LSI marketing, calling the S3FV9RR chip a “deadbolt on smart devices." The chip is due in Q3.

Dialog Semiconductor is shipping an ultra-low-power Wi-Fi SoC that can enable up to five-year battery operation from continuously connected devices, it announced Monday. The DA16200 was engineered for devices including connected door locks, thermostats and security video cameras that require “always on” Wi-Fi connectivity, it said. Minimum battery operating time is given as a year. The “highly integrated” DA16200 runs the full Wi-Fi system, security and networking protocol stack, eliminating the need for an external network processor, CPU or microcontroller, it said. One monolithic silicon die holds an 802.11b/g/n radio, baseband processor, MAC, on-chip memory, dedicated encryption engine and an ARM Cortex-M4F host networking applications processor. The company also announced the DA16600 module, which combines Wi-Fi from the DA16200 and Bluetooth Low Energy capabilities from its SmartBond TINY DA14531 SoC. The combo Wi-Fi and BLE module is said to eliminate issues caused by the coexistence of two radios at 2.4 GHZ in the same design.

Intel bowed its 10th-generation Core S-series desktop processors with maximum speeds of 5.3 GHz. The Core i9-10900K, with Thermal Velocity Boost, has up to 10 cores, 20 threads and DDR4-2933 memory speeds, it said Thursday. The processor enables more tuning control, faster multitasking and smoother gameplay, said Intel.

Samsung introduced a turnkey security solution for mobile devices that’s said to protect private data. The dedicated “tamper-resistant strongbox” stores users’ confidential and cryptographic data such as personal identification numbers, passwords and crypto-currency credentials separate from mobile memory such as embedded Universal Flash Storage, it said Wednesday. The S3K250AF-based Secure Element chip, used in Samsung's Galaxy S20 series smartphones, comprises a microcontroller, advanced hardware-level protection and an optimized secure operating system.