ASML Q1 25: The tariff effect. ASML reported reasonable Q1 25 results, but its order book was way adrift of expectations, which I take as a sign of weakness in China and uncertainty around tariffs as opposed to a sign that the AI freight train is slowing down. Q1 25 revenues / EPS were E7.7bn / E6.00 broadly in line...
The screw is given another turn. While it is not very difficult to make an argument for banning the sales of advanced chips into China, giving Nvidia no warning and costing it $5.5bn appears to be a bit of own goal in the short term, but in the long-term, this is likely to hurt China’s competitiveness overseas. The US Department...
Nvidia – Window dressing Nvidia is signing up to make products in the USA which is a move I suspect that it was already executing but it will have done itself no harm by being seen to fall in with the patriotic agenda. Following a catch-up with the President of the United States, Nvidia has said that it will produce...
I don’t think Wayve is going to make it. Wayve’s deal with Nissan is a big shot in the arm for the “brute force” approach to autonomous driving, but Nissan has made no promises to use it beyond level 2 leading me to think that a somewhat reluctant Nissan has been coaxed into giving it a try by SoftBank. Wayve...
Yield is everything. Relative newcomer to the semiconductor game SiCarrier made a splash at Semicon China 2025 by launching a lot of new equipment and claiming that non-optical methods may enable China to start producing 5nm chips on homemade equipment. This has underpinned a lot of chatter with some of the commentariat now confidently predicting that China will produce 5nm...
MediaTek – PC next? Mediatek’s new chip for Chromebooks sets a new standard for the high end of the Chromebook market and looks to me to be merely a stone’s throw from Intel and AMD facing another newcomer in the PC Market. MediaTek’s Kompanio Ultra has an NPU that runs at 50 TOPS, 8 Big Arm v9.2 cores(Cortex-X925), 2 x...
Samsung Q1 25 – Welcome relief Samsung reported good results as smartphones and legacy DRAM fared better than expected, but the key catalyst for recovery which is the qualification of Samsung’s HBM4 at Nvidia, remains a hurdle yet to be cleared. Preliminary Q1 25 revenues and operating profits came in at KRW79tn / KRW6.6tn ahead of estimates of KRW76.6tn /...
The fightback begins. Meta is demonstrating what RFM Research and Alavan Independent have suspected which is that DeepSeek’s methods are not that hard to replicate and that we are seeing the start of a race to the bottom in open source that will soon be replicated elsewhere. Meta has released Llama 4 which does not show any sudden jump in...
RFM has taken a short break for the end of the camel racing season and will return on April 7th.
Richard is founder, owner of research company, Radio Free Mobile. He has 16 years of experience working in sell side equity research. During his 11 year tenure at Nomura Securities, he focused on the equity coverage of the Global Technology sector.
TSMC Q1 25– No Wobbles
AI freight train is still rolling. The threat of tariffs, trade war, China restrictions and stock market volatility have been unable to dent TSMC, which reported good results and underlined that AI will continue to drive its revenues in 2025. Q1 25 revenues / EPS were NT839bn / NT13.94, broadly in line with estimates of NT837bn / NT13.62. TSMC confirmed...