Forging Ahead with Growth Strategy
During the past year, the global semiconductor industry has operated in a challenging global macroeconomic environment and the worldwide sales are expected to decline year-on-year. The majority of the application markets for semiconductors have deteriorated, with the exception of the wireless segment, which has enjoyed healthy growth mainly driven by the surge in popularity of smartphones and tablets.
The semiconductor industry is expected to rebound and grow steadily provided the modest improvement in worldwide GDP growth forecast for 2013 holds up. The industry growth is also likely to be led by smart wireless applications – exactly the business areas where we have focused on.
During 2012, we have adopted the growth-driving strategy of building our strengths to target high-growth smart applications, in particular smartphones, tablets, projectors and other smart devices, including Electronic Shelf Labels (ESL) and LED lighting solutions. We have realigned internal resources to strengthen the sales and marketing functions in order to further enhance our market outreach, improve the field application engineering services and technical support for customers, as well as strengthen technology & R&D development in these focused application areas.
Thus, we have geared up for further growth and have seen steady growth and design wins in these focused business areas and, most importantly, we see strong growth prospects as general market conditions continue to improve.
To capture the available opportunities and strive for continued steady growth, we shall continue to forge ahead with the winning formula of developing products targeting these high-growth applications.
For smartphones and tablets, we have garnered a number of design wins within the world’s top-tier smartphone and tablet models launched in the market, which further strengthened our clientele while extending our market outreach. To capitalize on this growing market, we have also introduced innovative solutions, in particular those that support different panel technologies to drive HD720, WXGA and FHD ultra high resolution displays.
Electronic shelf labels (ESL) using e-paper display technology are also expected to sustain growth momentum. We launched a series of new solutions custom made for world-leading ESL suppliers who have enjoyed steady expansion of their business.
During the year, we entered into an agreement with a leading TV manufacturer in China under the China Electronic Corporation to supply large TFT LCD TV driver ICs. To meet its higher demand for the products, we have agreed to increase the 2012 annual cap and also extend the agreement for two more years to cover 2013 and 2014, with increased annual caps. Market information indicates that the double-digit growth the large-display panel production enjoyed in China during 2012 will continue in 2013. With this high-volume customer on hand, we are confident that our Large Display business will continue to prosper.
While our LED lighting business was rather slow during the first three quarters of 2012, the increase in market demand in the fourth quarter has set the stage for growth in 2013. We shall continue to develop new solutions to tap this market.
As our foundation has been further strengthened and our strategies well in place, we shall continue to forge ahead with determination, aiming to achieve steady growth in 2013.
Dr Humphrey Leung
Group CEO
Solomon Systech Limited